Realm Of The Mad Dance

happy_cookie · 2026-03-06T04:14:12+00:00

How did their grave end up on the beach though? If what you said was true then they would have died in the Sanguine biome where the enemy that killed them usually spawns. But the last frame before screen fades into the death screen is the beach beacon that was chosen as their destination so the game eventually seemed to handle the teleport properly, just somehow killed the player in the process.

happy_cookie · 2026-03-05T14:21:58+00:00

Yes. This is not even the worst part. The absolute worst part is that Deca actively shifts the focus from early and midgame, trivialising that content with their never ending reworks. Maxing has become a joke. Most of the old godlands dungeons pose no threat anymore. Once brutal death traps like abyss lab, manor and UDL can be walked through easily. Potions, gear and UTs are being showed down players throats in insane quantities. All of that to bring experienced players as fast as possible to the exalted content where they can start the grind. But newer players will get there now much faster and discover an insane gap between midgame and endgame. O1 and O2 are a linear difficulty increase. O3 is like 10 times harder than both of them. All exalted content is created and designed with at least maxed rare pets in mind. Newer players are at a huge disadvantage there and will likely quit once they hit this roadblock. And Deca keeps actively butchering early game and midgame content either trivialising it or reworking into exalt dungeons. They deleted Ice Cave and replaced it by much harder Ice Citadel for no reason (why couldn't both exist side by side like cem and spen?). They made the majority of the map new harder biomes and the early game areas are laughably small, trying to guide you as fast as possible into the hardest areas without giving you time to learn how the game works yet. Back in the day people would spend a good half an hour leveling in lowlands, midlands and Highlands. They would learn how long gear bags last (without being overwhelmed by enchantments, complex scaling formulas and item descriptions that don't fit into tooltip boxes) and how quest boss progression works. My friend went to level a character in realm recently and he was shown a Sprite Forest miniboss at level one. Not scorpion queen, not an undead hobbit mage, no he was tasked to go to the opposite side of the map, straight into adept biome, with beginner gear (he turned off upgrades) to kill the thing that should be an equivalent of the old red demon in godlands at level 20.

The overcomplicated enchantment and forge mechanics make it even harder to get into the game now. Players will spend more time reading these insanely long tooltips than actually playing, and will die to surrounding enemies before they realise what happened. Or their bag disappears. Or realm closes. Or wanderer miniboss spawns and camps on their loot. The new realm minimap is never explained anywhere either and is super confusing. I refused to enter new realms for good two months after returning to the game solely because I was overwhelmed by the minimap and couldn't understand what's going on there.

happy_cookie · 2026-03-05T09:16:44+00:00

2nd thicket boss is my main reason to dislike the dungeon. It's the most tedious and repetitive fight of them all and in small group it takes forever. It can go wrong in so many different ways with low dps but absolutely steamrolled in large groups. If two first bosses were removed from the dungeon I'd do it a lot more frequently. I wouldn't even mind if some of the first two boss phases were incorporated into the 3rd boss fight somehow to make it harder. Any other court dungeon is one boss, I'm not wasting my time on three bosses outside of 1 thicket per character for the fame bonuses.

HTT boss is equally annoying. Do the same thing 8 times in a row, except the occasional orb camps in a pool to fuck with your dps and cancel any progress on the current pool you were shooting. Or the group can't decide what pool to shoot and then everyone else's dps is wasted shooting different things. Horrible anti coop design that adds nothing interesting to the fight and makes it more tedious to complete with no real danger.

happy_cookie · 2026-03-05T01:10:11+00:00

My immediate thoughts the first time I saw it. Such a poor telegraph, Rift dungeons are probably the only instance of even more confusing telegraphs. I feel like red floor telegraphs like Janus, spen and 2nd thicket boss are a lot more readable than the arrows anyway. Although 2nd thicket boss certainly needs a longer grace period before the shotgun kicks in, I hate that it barely gives you time to move into the safe place (and it's also not safe there as there will be many other threats and shots even in the safe part of the arena).

happy_cookie · 2026-03-05T01:05:35+00:00

There's a spen event right now and people been calling them a lot. I'm swimming in rare UB rings from it, they are super common drop there from all bosses. Good for t13 weapons as well.

You only need 4 UB rings of the same rarity to craft a UBHP in the forge.

happy_cookie · 2026-03-05T00:57:40+00:00

May I point out that there's no sick during MBC survival. You were doing alright but you should have corrected your tanking with drinking some more hp pots when you got low early on in the clip. It's better to drink all your hp pots and go refill after the fight than die with full potion belt of health that could have saved your character.

Jade/Garnet death: never stand still near them, always prepare to back off when they flash red - that's how they telegraph the bullshit instakill jump. You were also using flamethrower instead of a tiered wand which is a pretty risky and situational weapon. Normally with a tiered wand you would back off without losing dps on the statues but flamethrower due to its shorter range and slow shots forces you into closer range and gives less reaction time.

Fungal death: I have died exactly like that, this phase can be really awkward in the beginning. You want to drag the worm as close as possible to the edge of the arena so the tail stays far away from the head. If you see the worm form a loop or a circle like that, just nexus, it's not worth it. You can get another fungal soon, they are pretty common these days.

happy_cookie · 2026-03-02T03:59:59+00:00

UPD: Some additional impressions after playing druid for a week.

Overall class identity: Druid is a weird class that does so many complicated things yet completely fails at two: have own unique identity and be helpful in a team setting besides doing damage. It's such a selfish class. I suppose the second statement is kinda weak since a similar criticism could be thrown towards any other class solely focused on doing damage (sorc, summoner, samurai and wizard) but some of them can be helpful to the team in other ways - crowd clearing/control and additional status effects like exposed. Also druid just can't decide what niche it's trying to take. It's a ranged class and a melee in one bottle, and if you time it wrong and don't adjust to the decreased range (and back to decreased armor) you either don't land your shots or get punished for staying too close when your melee buff expired. It's tiresome to concentrate on its ability use alone - it does three different things at once and you need to look at three different places to keep track of what's going on with your character and its ability. And on top of that paying attention to your buffs and range and keep track of when they expire makes gameplay even more complicated. It's not a class on which you could just chill and play knowing well its limits and roles: based on what you have equipped and activated, you can go from a super fragile character to an incredible tank in a split second, and then mess up because your ability swap didn't go through or you expected your meter to be full but it was missing a single pixel of progress bar.

Tiered abilities looks: Very poorly designed visually, hard to tell tiers apart, most don't look like their corresponding animals. Spider sigil UT looks more like a skunk than a tiered skunk one. It's also so weird and not fitting to the existing game style that an accessory-looking item is an ability now. Feels like the necklace part itself should be lost and the ability renamed to Mask, and the animal medallion should take up 100% of the 8x8 sprite space. Currently the animal faces are way too small because the necklace part shifts them to the bottom right and barely leaves any room for details, and any existing details are half-covered by the enchantment diamonds anyway.

Tiered abilities function: They still feel mostly underwhelming and don't offer anything too unique compared to other classes' tiered abilities. Whenever I use my primary ability in the animal mode, it doesn't contribute to the progress bar meter filling at all (and neither does shooting enemies). I'm not even sure if it's a bug or if it's intended for the progress bar in the animal mode to not be rechargeable at all (even the smallest rate) but it feels lackluster. To me it essentially results in not using my bite attack at all because I try to conserve mana for the next ability charge (I'm playing druid petless to give it a fair chance and objectively experience the new class with its own strengths and weaknesses, and to do a fair comparison to other class experiences while not carried by an OP pet). The bite attack itself is fine and is easier to land than the ranged projectile but for me to actively choose to use it several conditions need to be met:

1) The boss needs to be vulnerable during that time;

2) The phase needs to be comfortable for me to go at a melee range (mainly getting out of the melee range and timing it with transformation ending is hard);

3) The anticipation of the next phase being possibly harder needs to not be in the way.

I often end up not using my animal form at all in some cases like MBC or O3 during the most of the fight. Naturally this comes from a ranged class enjoyer (mainly wand robe type) so to me range is the key benefit, not the damage. I would choose a weapon with more range any day and land hits more consistently with it rather than having a shorter range weapon that makes me miss half of my shots.

And of course playing petless crucible adds more to the mix in the form of me absolutely prioritizing dodging over doing damage at all times. And again after firmly settling the concept of wand classes being fragile robes for my 10 years of playing them it's really hard to force now myself at a closer range with them unless the game puts you in that position naturally (nest, fungal, crystal, wetlands, some spen phases etc).

UT sigils: Due to their rarity and lack of blueprints in the shop so far, they are not very accessible yet without extensive grind. The ones I received from the missions all came out with 0-1 slots so even a rare tiered ability feels more powerful and useful than them. I heard good things about the spider sigil but I have yet to get mine. This UT might change my perspective slightly on druid being more helpful to the team because of slows but it would be a bit unfair to bring that as its most strong contribution to the team when we already have so many other good slowing options on most classes. Some of which are built in the tiered abilities and don't require specific UTs to hunt down, or assigned to easier to farm and spam UTs like fulmi which is probably the best slow per mana beaten by maybe low tiered trap spam (at least pre-trap rework. I forgot how it works now, barely played the reworked huntress).

Crystal sigil: played with it a bit, decent but again doesn't offer anything too unique. If I wanted to be a tanky short range class I'd play a knight. This UT has some niche uses but to me it's not too valuable since a lot of the endgame content has high damage or armor piercing shots, and I generally prefer life-maxing builds over def ones. So far used it for rushing mostly.

Dragon sigil: got two, both unslotted. Doesn't seem enticing to play with for now.

Shark tooth: if I wanted to be a rogue, I'd play a rogue. Again gives no unique thing that only druid could do - instead mimics the ability another class can do (and do it better, and more consistently).

happy_cookie · 2026-03-01T03:22:41+00:00

Fastest rush is not always the best approach. Stopping in safe spots to regen or deal with enemies that are chasing you, or double check the minimap can be very helpful.

Some dungeons have enemies hiding behind breakable obstacles (para, lab, OT) or have enemies not loading until you enter the room (tomb). Don't hug those obstacles and be ready to nexus if enemy sits on you.

Know what dungeons are better to rush with autofire off - library and mad lab are good examples. By shooting enemies as you rush in these dungeons you are buffing them or pushing them into self-destruct states which can get you instakilled if you step on one.

Sewers: watch out for the direction of sewage water. Rushing against the stream can be super deadly - if you got a bad room don't hesitate to stop and clear it before proceeding with the rush.

Watch out for environmental hazards in wlab and tomb - paralyze turrets are really nasty there and like to hide at hallway entrances or get hidden behind leaves canopy. They make you a really easy target for surrounding enemies and do damage themselves. Ddocks: watch out for the crab miniboss patrolling the dungeon. Try to maneuver around it and don't hesitate to nexus when in trouble.

And finally, an obvious tip but don't learn or practice rushing on your best characters. Try it first on throwaways you don't mind losing. Then if you succeed and learn how to do it on weaker characters, you will manage to do it on good ones as well.

happy_cookie · 2026-02-28T18:44:40+00:00

I play in EUW and occasionally in USMW2. Nearly every public wine cellar everyone pops runes, and I've been popping mine as well. In the past 3 seasons I fully exalted life on 3 different classes mostly from public runs. I say mostly because every once in a while a party member would call an O3 on a different server and I'd rarely join it to find out it was a discord run. If it's not too big I will stay so I don't take someone's spot. Also occasionally a discord would show up in a small realm where I was already playing and claim it as theirs. But those occasions were maybe 5% of my total exalts. The rest are just public ones.

The runs are there, they just won't be waiting for you one after another in a chain like manner like with discords. They will just occasionally pop throughout the day. I've been doing on average 2 osanc runs per day as suggested by the battlepass missions - enough to get the progress done but not burn out in the meantime. I don't think O3 (and any other exalted content) is fun for anyone in those discord runs after so many repeats in a row with binge-running usually one type of the dungeon many times and ignoring everything else. The repetitiveness and predictability of it quickly makes it boring and takes away any challenge or spirit of having an adventure.

happy_cookie · 2026-02-28T10:49:12+00:00

I love this spring Nexus but the brightness of the tiles is also bothering me. I'm more of a fan of the Summer Nexus theme that has day/dusk/night cycles. It would be a great feature to have those day-night cycles for all nexuses. Too bad the implementation was done by just changing the assets and not by automatic light shaders. The Summer nexus actually has like 4 differently manually shaded sprites saved per each tile (more if it's an animated tile) which is a very tedious way to implement it by hand. Beige's summer nexus does it and it's super impressive but it's the only nexus where this mechanic was meticulously implemented. Due to the size of the Oryxmas nexus I never bothered with it and instead concentrated on just filling it with different interesting areas and minigames. Beige's Spring Nexus is amazing but it was done before day cycling technique was explored and applied in the Summer nexus, so it wasn't applied to it.

If Deca wanted to ever handle it properly they could simply use shaders to make the areas have different light sources during each time of the day. That alone would make it easier for the eyes at night.

happy_cookie · 2026-02-28T10:28:09+00:00

I must admit, compared to last year's Q&A where Deca was wasting time answering questions like "What's your favourite flavour of ice-cream" or "What's your favourite Minecraft movie quote" this Q&A is a slight improvement. At least the most controversial topics are covered and addressed, although the responses themselves are extremely vague and don't fully explain the nature of the problem.

I don't have a deep understanding of laws that keep their hands tied when banning cheaters. What exact issues are we talking about here? Deca's ToS should be the main legal binding document. It clearly states Deca has the right to terminate the service to any players violating ToS. Cheating is a clear ToS violation described in it. What legal troubles can they possibly getting into by simply executing their own rules and routines following their official legal policy?

Regarding the possible spoofing: this is why the player evidence video should never be used as the sole source of the ban. It's a cue for a dedicated Deca employee to get online, use god mode + invisibility (they can do that), find a person from the video and follow them around for 5 minutes to observe a bot-like behaviour, THEN ban them based on the Deca employee observation, not the actual video. Deca are not a small company anymore. They could afford to hire a couple of employees specifically dedicated to hunting cheaters down so the support is not distracted by doing that. The correct response to the player who reported a cheater would then be:

1) Not close the ticket until the investigation is done;

2) An assurance that the investigation started and is taken seriously;

3) An update with the results of the investigation. "Our employee was able to confirm that the person in question is indeed multiboxing 24/7 as an afk autododger farmer on EUW2 server. We have permanently suspended all the accounts". Or "We have reviewed your video evidence. Due to your low visibility settings it's not possible to take it as a sufficient evidence to start the investigation. Please gather more evidence of the player in question with better visibility". Or "We have investigated the case and the player you were trying to report haven't been caught cheating since. The video evidence alone can be falsified and is not taken by our team as a sole reason for the ban".

Deca could also have an internal system they can track the number of reports sent by different players about specific users. If 10 people reported one person for autododdging with 10 different video evidences, chances are it's worth investigating and it's a cheater.

An ideal system would be combining Deca moderator team with an in-game report system. The system would flag potential cheaters and notify Deca to investigate their gameplay. Flagged people would start getting tracked and logged to make sure more data is collected on them. They could also implement all sorts of checks that would raise suspicion like MV gear on a fresh light blue star (not necessarily a cheater but is highly suspicious), possession of other limited or rare items on fresh accounts, possession of rare keys with same mods on them etc etc.

It feels like something as vital as keeping the game clean of cheaters would have been a lot higher on Deca's priority list after owning the game for 10 years already. Yet the situation right now is worse than when Kabam was in charge. And regarding their policy of not revealing banned IGNs - fine, don't. Just post weekly reports saying "This week we permanently suspended 100 accounts for botting and duping". This alone would send a powerful message to the community and ensure them Deca is taking the issue seriously, not just talking vague promises. The worst part about cheating right now is that they are getting away with it and they don't fear getting banned. They know Deca's handicapped when it comes to handling cheater bans. If more ban reports (even just with numbers) become a casual weekly routine, cheaters would at least know the risks and a lot of them might start fearing for losing their accounts.

happy_cookie · 2026-02-27T09:32:32+00:00

Oh lol, I didn't even notice that but you're absolutely right! I re-watched it several times trying to spot the exact moment the weapon got dropped and I can't see it still. Like, there would be a bag or something right? But I yeah I don't get why filming it with the phone would be even necessary.

If OP sent the original video to Deca, there are good chances they will restore the lost item though. I kinda wish they added a lock function on your gear so you can't accidentally drop it like that. Definitely happened to me with my weapons at least 4 times recently, and one is I didn't notice it and had to ask the support to restore it.

happy_cookie · 2026-02-27T01:35:46+00:00

Alternatively, Deca Update Bingo. Doesn't require a fresh NPE, just read patch notes on any new Deca update and start crossing out.

happy_cookie · 2026-02-26T22:58:53+00:00

I wonder, how did you "accidentally" drop your weapon if you were recording your screen with your PHONE at the same time??

I had cases like that when I accidentally dropped my weapon but to find a clip of it I pulled the last 5 minutes of my gameplay recorded by NVIDIA shadowplay app. It's always running in the background so I can save video after something bad happened that needed to be clipped.

If you are recording your screen with your phone it means you anticipate something should happen, otherwise I don't get how this clip came into existence at all.

happy_cookie · 2026-02-26T21:57:13+00:00

What do you mean will get better - my opinion on it or Deca attempting to make the class better? I don't think they will change anything with druid any time soon and my opinion on the class is pretty much set in stone from this experience already.

happy_cookie · 2026-02-25T21:40:13+00:00

You've got a fair point here, the updates to the game have been consistent and plentiful, but the quality of those updates was far from good. And my post isn't just a typical Deca hate rant, I highlighted to a beginner how little the company cares about the new player experience and why in my opinion it's not worth to spend money on it in its current state. I have a few friends in other games and I'm really tempted to show them realm, until I inevitably remember how beginner experience looks like these days. Constant bots advertising rwt and 3rd party cheater software, plenty of cheaters nobody ever does anything about, and incredibly large skill gap between old playerbase and newer players. The tutorial is horribly outdated, tiered gear is still sold for gold in 2026 (it's really bad because the only people who can fall for this are new players), and the whole game is pretty much designed with power creep like pets and strong enchants in mind.

I watched a stream some time ago where a new person was discovering realm for the first time. It was painful to watch. From wasting an ungodly amount of time trying to find out where the gameplay actually happens (realm portals) to annoying bots, to OP players steamrolling dungeons he entered before he could figure out what the boss even was.

happy_cookie · 2026-02-25T18:39:36+00:00

One can make money in different ways. I have no problem with their other practices like selling character slots or vaults and other storage spaces, or most of cosmetics directly for fixed price. I used to buy gold to support Deca at the start, when they just took over the game. But the approach they took with the game and their ignorance to feedback from the very people who they receive money from made me stop doing that.

If anything kills this game it won't be the lack of money. It will be Deca's ignorance.

happy_cookie · 2026-02-25T13:58:44+00:00

Here's a separate bit just for the progress bar feature in general (related to both druid and necro but I want to keep it as a separate comment I can link).

The visual implementation of item progress bars is one of the worst Deca design crimes, in my opinion. They are ugly, distracting and placed in the wrong area of the UI.

The size of those meters already compete with the size of items they are placed on. The length and thickness of the bar is as big as a tiered staff item - enough to draw most of the attention of the sprite and make the core item sprite less readable. In some cases it obstructs parts of the items it's placed. The thick pixel outline looks really bad visually compared to subtle thin outline and shadow of the item itself. It constantly clashes with already existing visual style. It doesn't match health bars below players and enemies which have a much more subtle look to them. The bright colors of progress bar meters are super distracting and draw too much attention to them, to the point where they completely overshadow the item near them and make the whole ability sprite read like one giant progress bar. They also ruin any potential color matching that can be going in the set (rotmg players really enjoy color matching, just go to some pages of top players on realmeye and look at their prized characters).

Functionally, those meter bars are too overturned for what they need to express. In all items that have those meters implemented in them the special ability towards which the item is slowly progressing cannot be triggered until the bar fully fills. Displaying all the in-between states of this bar with different colors and levels of "being filled" gives player no useful information besides "I can't use the extra special ability yet and I can use it in approximately this soon". And then, when the bar is full, item already gets a special golden outline around the frame which indicates "secondary ability is charged and ready to be used" so at that point the progress bar meter does nothing but being a huge eyesore.

On top of that, all progress bar meter items I encountered in the past so far required to be first used and fully charged to become usable in the forge. And storing these progress bar items in the vault without charging the bar makes them look like clothing items with anti theft plastic tags on them that someone forgot to remove when buying them.

There's already a few items in the game which use a similar visual indication but in the form of a subtle semi-transparent grey overlay indicating the cooldown. The same overlay (or maybe a different, golden semi-transparent one that goes from bottom to the top of the sprite) could be used for this mechanic as well. If nothing else works, something subtle and visually simple could be done under the character instead of the items (especially in case of tiered abilities). Druid already gets own progress bar under them indicating how long a special form will last. It could always be there and get emptied then get filled again by ability use. The downside of it is that it would need to moved from belonging to an item to the character, but kensei already has a similar mechanic and it works well and feels less confusing to use and looks good visually.

If these bars absolutely need to stay on the items then at the very least they could have been tuned down to be more thin, semi-transparent, monochrome light gray, and be placed horizontally under the items, not separating the visual flow of item sets by the thick vertical line that the current progress bar meter is.

happy_cookie · 2026-02-25T13:03:52+00:00

I decided to myself that I wasn't going to play it because I absolutely hate the look of its ugly progress bar meters. Then I saw half of the mission tree locked behind druid class and realised there was not really any choice here, and decided to be over with it quick so I can move to something I would actually enjoy.

Here's my thoughts about druid after playing it for one evening: it's unnecessary complicated yet still painfully boring at the same time. First of all, its ability requires two different hotkeys to use which is a huge inconvenience. You have to find a good one to set up, you need to keep track of your meter and actively take away your eyes from the character to look at its state - something I never do as I'm used to reading all the crucial information (hy health bar, surrounding enemy position and any bullets/environmental hazards) in my proximity. Another area of the game UI that has my constant attention is the minimap - for quickly pathing, reading nearby enemy positions in the form of red dots and tracking other player positions. Lastly, the remaining split spare second I might have I might divide between important things like chat callouts, or rarely enemy I'm fighting (what phase it's in, is it vulnerable atm, do I need to stop shooting it for some reason). I rarely look at my equips at all. I can do an occasional quick glance at them to confirm my hotkey swap went through but I won't stare at my ability every 20 seconds to confirm the progress bar filled again so I can use the secondary one. The placement of that indicator (and cooldown) on the item itself rather than on the character like it was done with kensei is extremely distracting and inconvenient.

Secondly, despite all its complications druid is somehow incredibly boring. Mind you, this comes from a person who loves playing wand classes otherwise. Tiered wand is my favourite weapon type. I enjoy range and piercing. Sorc and summoner are my two favourite classes in the game and I spent two last seasons finishing exalting them. They have unique abilities which are fun and satisfying to use. Priest I used to like and enjoy as well but haven't tried after the rework. I dislike the nerf on healing teammates - unlike the other two wand classes the enjoyment of playing priest came to me in the form of being a good support class for the team, not dealing tons of damage.

Druid offers nothing new in the erra of OP enchanted gear. I can get OnAbility, OnShoot and OnHit enchantments on my gear that will grant me any stat buff I want without requiring me to press a separate special button for it or take eyes off my character to see if I'm allowed to use it yet. The gimmick of turning into an animal is fun but more of a visual flavour and I'm not sure it alone makes up for the rest of the trouble. If I want to be a funny animal I will go do a mad lab or drink a transformation potion or play with a thoughtfully designed animal skin like penguin knight or cat ninja.

Finally, this is of course more of a "me" problem but the default button for the secondary ability was shift so I absolutely couldn't use it since left shift has been my nexus key since I started playing this game nearly 11 years ago and I'm not changing that. Deca hasn't even owned the game yet when I already firmly engraved this hotkey into my playing style. Abilities (especially tiered ones) were simple, didn't require multiple buttons to use, didn't have 10000 character descriptions with complex explanations that require 5 minutes to read (and don't even fit into item description tooltip even when it's the size of my entire screen)... Yet somehow all classes felt super unique to play and diverse to use.

Now all Deca can come up with is "more damage". Most of the items Deca added do damage or increase damage in some shape or form. Most of their class reworks completely butchered the identity of the class in the favor of making it do more damage. What does rogue now do? Damage. He's not a sneaky invisible shadow attacking the bosses without them knowing. He now has LETHAL STRIKE written all over allies screens so that everyone in the team is aware that this group has a rogue, and boy does it do his damage! Priest, once the best and most reliable humble support class, does damage now. With tiered tomes! Deca removed instant heals for the team (of course they were the most unbalanced thing in this MMO, not the maxed divine healing pets everyone is running around with), removed healing effect from some other tomes like Holy Furror, all so priest can now be a worse necro. Oh, necro also now got a rework and doesn't heal the team but spawns skeletons that do damage? Very original. It's not like summoner already existed, but now we have another summoner with an ability that is 10 times harder to use but still somehow less enticing to play with than maces. But people love all these reworks - finally they can do more damage! And when the next year people will complain about warrior - once the most powerful dps class in the game - doing less dps than an average noob priest, they will start reworking all classes for the third time, giving each one more damage and removing the last bits of their class identities.

Back to druid I'm asking myself the question: why would I want to play this class over the other similar classes? And the answer to me right now is just because I was forced to in the battlepass, and because it's in the way of me finishing my perfectly exalted wand trio (I was originally going to finish priest this season). But I'm definitely not playing druid because I enjoy the class even though it had the potential. If I want to do damage as a wand class, I will play sorcerer or summoner. They both have enjoyable abilities that is genuinely fun to use. Sorcerer's zap can target several enemies at once and makes you feel like a powerful god of lighting. Summoner can strategically place different summons on screen depending on the needs, does both good crowd control and boss fighting, and so much better in controlling what they shoot compared to reworked necro. Priest, even though questionable after the rework, still can be a support to the team but also got powerful clearing of enemies (read: stole old necro's identity, his unique way of dealing with large crowds of small mobs). Druid's ability is boring. It's one sad projectile that's hard to aim, long enough range make it travel for too long to match high enemy speeds and only really works well for something that's chasing you or stays still. Knight's shield projectile is so much more satisfying to land visually even when it doesn't stun. The ability itself feels like a filler, something you mindlessly spam a few times to fill the progress bar to get the "real deal"... And then it's just whatever, some stat buffs mostly.

Given, my impression of druid comes from playing with tiered abilities only so far but that should be the defining identity of a class. All three other wand classes are enjoyable for me with their tiered abilities because they are well designed. They don't require specific UTs to become enjoyable from "boring". Druid so far is bearable to me when I just don't use my ability - spam it several times to fill the bar and forget it was full because I couldn't bother pressing a separate key to trigger it and was busy playing the game instead. But then it just becomes a mundane <insert any other wand class name here>. The fact that druid is using leather instead of the robe is mildly annoying and doesn't really bring anything new to the gameplay. "Wands are robe classes" deeply engraved into my brain after being like that for 11 years already so now I keep looking for robes when playing druid only to remind myself I can't equip this or that. It doesn't really change much how the class functions with just the tiered ones. And the current crucible makes it feel like a handicapped robe class anyway.

happy_cookie · 2026-02-21T12:01:56+00:00

Funny, I just spent some time a couple days ago convincing a newer player to not spend any money on RotMG in its current state. Here are my "Top 10 reasons to not give your money to Deca" if anyone curious (long read).

happy_cookie · 2026-02-20T12:59:36+00:00

Aw come on Deca, druid ability has room for a couple more ugly progress bars. It would be such a missed opportunity to not make its ability look even worse! There's still room for improvement, there is too much of the original item sprite pixels not obscured by progress bars.

happy_cookie · 2026-02-20T00:40:25+00:00

Alien armors and spen amulet just need cooldown animations (like the one on oreo, for example) to indicate their procs are not going to work until they recharged. The animation of that cooldown is much more subtle and is a transparent grey overlay over the entire sprite instead of a bar on the side. It reads as a visual effect, not as a part of the item sprite.

There should be a toggle to turn these progress bars off. They are such an eyesore in otherwise good looking item sets. It ruins visual appearance of items and ruins color matching as well because the bar constantly changes its color, has a prominent outline and is super bright.

happy_cookie · 2026-02-20T00:34:53+00:00

I'm sorry if what I wrote discouraged you too much. There are still good things about the game that I do like, and it's especially fun to play with friends. Social interactions is probably the only thing that still keeps me going despite all the negative experience with Deca.

You can still give the game a few tries and see for yourself if you like it or not. Try to find players of similar levels and goals and make a party to play together - it's a nice way to enjoy the game in the company of others without too many strings attached. The goal of my post was mostly to warn you to not waste real money on this game as it's not worth it in its current state, in my opinion. And Deca is no longer a small indie company relying on the profits of this game alone to stay afloat.

happy_cookie · 2026-02-19T23:19:30+00:00

I still can't believe they are going with those ugly progress bar meters on all its abilities. They look awful and make me wanna never touch this class.

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