Xarrayne

I believe you need to unlock the use of Staves before you can craft the basic and intermediates, and Druids start with Sickles only - you need to advance into one of the Staff-using trees. The advanced Staff can be crafted by anyone at a Woodworking table.

Ah ok, yeah it's a little different for PvE (but not that much)... TL;DR Bark Skin and Orb spam for bombs in Life Tray, and Blight/Spark/Gaea's Wail for Death Tray. It may seem clunky at times and slow when you can't bomb, but if you figure out a route with easy-to-bomb groups you can AoE them non-stop all day. See below for more. Wartribes like to jump and charge about during combat, so I try to place bombs while sitting outside aggro range. Even in Wartribe gear you probably don't need a full 15-orb stack to at least chunk mobs into easily-killable range, so you can split that 15 into two or even three piles if the group you're aiming for is spread out. Place the orbs in a way that'll kill as many mobs as possible, go straight into Blighting it and then just Spark down whatever's left. Gaea's Wail (the channelled bear thing) is good damage too, but it's not very reliable on moving targets. Death Tray Ult is the same story but even greater AoE damage, so once you're confident enough to not need it for survival you can use it to mow down melee groups whenever it's up - double-dash into the middle, let them all gather around and then just teabag them to death. Oh, and don't try to kite the melee mobs from too far away - they'll just spam pulls/jumps and get right back on you if you do, so kite in small circles with Shroud/Root or if you're desperate find some obstacles to LoS them around. As for managing Essence that's more of an acquired habit, but there's a couple of pointers I can give. Faerie Fire (the Armor Break) and Call Storm (1-target stun) cost a lot of Essence, so just throw them out if you need to spend more time in Life Tray. FF is a faster animation so just do that if you're really tight for time. If you need to gain Essence quickly then Sacrifice (with improved talent) is your ticket - if you're worried about the HP loss then placing 3 orbs from Life tray > switch to Death > Sacrifice > running over the orbs will give you a chunk of Essence, heal you back (and maybe a little more) plus the big orb will give Essence on every tick rather than taking it away while in Death tray.

After reading this a 2nd time and finally understanding the premise I unironically think this would be hella fun and work quite well as a game mechanic... I can't say how easy it would be to do on the technical side or if it's even something that should/would be done, but you can have my internet points for the idea

Simply put, If I'm low on Essence I'm trying to set up a bomb, and if I'm high on Essence I'm trying to find someone to dump it into, either by Sparking (LMB) or by throwing out CC and debuffs. There's no real "rotation" per se, you just have to get a feel for the pacing of CF fights and what kind of things need to be done and when. I don't know what Race/Discs you chose so I can't speak for how those will fit into your "rotation", but in general you wanna use Bark Skin on CD, Root*/Call Storm people who are either causing your team trouble or trying to escape from damage, and use Faerie Fire/Flames to soften up something that the group wants to put damage into. You can use Death Tray ult to contribute to AoE damage in a scrum (though it's risky) and if there's no bomb chances you can use Blight for the Electric armor debuff to boost your LMB attacks. You can dive/harass the enemy back line pretty far and skedaddle out by using Shroud** to stun people who turn on you, and Pack Avatar is also a great contribution if you use it when your group's making a big push to help ensure that something goes down. *Hold onto your Root if you have a bomb ready to go, because that's your best shot at holding someone down for the explosion. **Just press the button once and ignore the 2nd part of the combo. At the end of the day Archdruid is very much a "jack of all trades, master of [one]"... It's a versatile and relatively self-sufficient class, but the bombs are gonna be most of your appreciable contribution; in fact they're so powerful that it would be unfair for Archdruid to be particularly good at anything else. It can be a huge (and hilarious) contribution that instantly turns fights in your favour, don't get me wrong, but you spend a lot of time setting up with no pay-off, watching your team die and being too deficient in healing to save them or running around tickling enemies with LMB, and I wholeheartedly agree that it feels bad/useless in a lot of situations. With the right stat balance (60/40 Spirit/Int) and high-end gear you can maybe think about off-healing, which I am all about because that's something that's always useful, but the main job of an Archdruid is to be a Catch-22-style pain in the ass. If the enemy leaves you alone you are free to bomb them; if the enemy chases/pokes you then you soak that damage and lead them on a wild goose chase, freeing up pressure on the rest of your team.

I definitely have more time than sense

I'm not dead, just lazy

A little solo-capade:

Yeah we're just trying to sort this poorly made socks out; one-shot mechanics have to function perfectly (including in relation to CC) or it's just stupid... There needs to be a clear and consistent way to counterplay or avoid it, and exactly when you need to react to it needs to be clear as well.

@smoot Yeah you're probably right about that, I heard Darth's elbow go off at the same time the damage happened but even that isn't gonna do 15k+ damage lol...

I don't think that damage on Jecht was from my bomb, because the Blight debuff isn't on him and Stephone dies to the bomb a second or so later (right when the Blight debuff appears on Jecht)... There are a few people here who take chunks of damage at different times in that area, and from this perspective it's really hard to tell if any of them are from Darthbunbun or from some custardy timing with Blight damage. The explosion visual/audio at the end is misaligned, but the "warning" orbs are showing up at the right time (2 seconds before damage is done); they had enough time to recognise what was coming and react to it, but the poor animation timing at the end is definitely a wrench in the works ACE pls. Again I do think a sharper audio cue at the beginning would also help, because the orbs can be hard to spot in the thick of things.

I think it is mentioned in the tooltip for the talent that unlocks the staff trees, but as a staff-wielding Druid you don't generate Essence passively anymore - you have to cast spells in Life tray in order for that to happen... You also have to start watching that you don't go over 80% Essence or you'll start burning - it's easy enough to fix by either ulting in Life tray or by switching to Death tray and casting spells there to dump the Essence.

The longer you hold down the button the more damage it'll do.

Dead. from laughter ofc

Is that Dark Souls 2 music around the 9 minute mark?