Quote Originally Posted by Troacctid View Post
I'm actually changing my vote on Spontaneous Druid to a 1. I think spontaneous casting is criminally underrated. In this case, you actually have a lot of effective spells known off a very powerful list, you don't have a gimped progression like T2 spontaneous casters typically do, you have savagely good class features, and overall you're actually pretty close to the full power of a normal Druid. Yes, obviously you're still worse, but there is a lot of room to be worse than the #1 most powerful class in the game while still being top-tier, and I don't think you're as worse as a lot of people assume.
It's an interesting position, certainly. In core, I have the feeling that spontaneous druids are really really similar to normal druids. The core druid list has a number of spell levels where you just want to be laying down the same spell over and over again, fewer options with significant out of combat impact than the wizard or cleric (especially when you consider that something like control winds, which does have out-of-combat impact, is something the spontaneous druid would take anyway), and fewer long duration buffs that you'd want to trade out active spells for later, and which you're using once a day. The spells are there, certainly. Scrying, spellstaff, healing, stone shape/wall of stone, and a number of others, along with stuff like greater magic fang for that buff role. It's different, and the spontaneous druid strikes me as somewhat worse (especially because spontaneous conversion lets them have access to the repeated casting of something broadly efficient mechanic that tends to give spontaneity an advantage), but it's not that much worse.

The non-core situation is worse. Not crazy worse, maybe not worse enough to drop the class a tier, but possibly worse enough to do that. It's an environment with more of those out of combat effects, especially in the area of minionmancy, an environment where some spell levels (third especially) can become near entirely devoted to buff routines later on, a plan the spontaneous druid can't make use of nearly as well, and an environment where sanctified and corrupt spells are a thing, one more relevant to druids than to most prepared casters (why would the wizard or cleric care about animate with the spirit?). I might be applying too high a standard of optimization here, thinking of all these cool and sometimes obscure things a druid can do that a spontaneous druid cannot, failing to recognize that a spontaneous druid can still know enhance wild shape, blizzard, and fey ring, and kick a ton of ass in that level range among others. Even out of core, it strikes me as a list more amenable to spontaneous casting than the wizard/sorcerer list, especially when you consider all that the druid's class features bring to the table.

One makes sense, is what I'm generally getting at. I don't think I'm there yet though. The spontaneous druid and spirit shaman alike strike me as weirdly hanging out on the edge between one and two. I feel like I might swap to 1.5 at some point, but one is tricky when I don't think they win against tier one classes. Two is admittedly tricky as well. I don't know if the class loses to any tier two classes. I feel sometimes, especially now that we have two completely separate 4.5's, like we're going to weirdly wind up with like eleven tiers, six normal and five as the in-between spaces which demarcate where the line is between one tier and another. It's something like what I was getting at awhile back with the fighter, noting that classes which fall near the middle can represent the line. But we're at this strange space right now where the relevant classes might fall smack dab perfect on the relevant lines.