Greetings,

I'm posting this in hopes that someone will be able to teach me some good tactics for fighting against an opponent that uses a demense. I have had difficulty in the past and I struggle to survive trying to fight them at all. I'm a Celestine (guardian guild in Celest), but an inexperienced fighter. I've been trying to practice in the arenas, but I never have any chance against mages inside their demense.

Any tips would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

You sip love, right? What's your third skill? Tarot, healing?

Forgive my ignorance. What does sipping love do?

I'm a tarot user.

It gives you an affliction.

While you have that affliction, random people in the room will become lusted to you, and you will become lusted to them, on a 20 second tick - note that you won't be lusted to them after you already are, so after the first time it's all beneficial pretty much. Unless they reject (4 second equilibrium cost), the lust will make you an ally forcibly, and not an enemy, so their demesne won't work.

If I'm lusted, will it hinder my Guardian skills?

Not that I know of.
It's irritating for Nihilists and Moondancers to lose darkmoon and contagion, but I think Celestines and Shadowdancers get off scott-free.

You also have lust tarot if you get in a pinch, but it looks like your problem is more being unable to kill him than actually having problems not dying.

Correct. I've tried Soulless but I can never get my timing right. I've thought about going the Inquisition route though. Would that be better?

I think you're going to have problems with either. Try that, I guess.

If it were me I'd experiment with how much damage I can get out of my cosmicfire on a fire-weak race, but I wouldn't be too hopeful.

There's no way cosmicfire can outdamage anyone in a fight. It's almost impossible. Insta-kills are my only resort. But thanks for trying anyway. I need to find a Trainer or something...

Okay, as Shiri said, you *need* to sip love. If they don't notice it, their demesne is completely disabled... if they do, they lose equilibrium getting rid of it and a few demesne effects may miss before they reenemy. Lust tarot should be *amazingly* helpful for you as well, experiment with it. It takes longer for them to reject and renemy than for you get balance back. This will not really get you much of an offensive advantage, but if you play with it enough to get it down you should learn how to use it to avoid key demesne effects.

After that... hm. You need ways to trap them, tie them down, work on absolve or soulless. I generally wouldn't go for an inquisition unless you have them trapped somehow (icewalls, they can't tumble, or something else). Doesn't work very well if they just ignite the icewalls (or a druid climbs the trees), or tumble, or a lot of other things.

You do it -after- screwing people up with aeon/stupidity/anorexia/whatever. Don't let them sip, lock them up first. It's the only way guardians win full stop really. Our offence isn't exactly fluid.

Your difficult is that hindering a mage/druid is harder than hindering any other class as a guardian, because their effects happen anyway, and those effects do things like move you or stun you or paralyse you so you have to fiddle around to get back to them before you can continue hitting them.

For example, if currents shunts you out of a room and your angel ticks, you lose an angel tick, so your offence is slowed down, and there's really nothing you can do about that. Means it's harder to stick things like aeon and such.

Thanks for the advice so far. From what I gather, I should:

1) Let them come to me if possible. Make them demense up to me.
2) As soon as they come in, try to lust them to avoid demense effects
3) Hinder, hinder, hinder
4) Kill with cosmicfire or other insta-kill

I'll try this approach and see how it feels for me. Thanks again.

Mmm... I'd not say hinder so much as try to mess them up with afflictions. If that involves hindering them (ie, aeon), so be it. But don't waste valuable time webbing unless it's required for what you're trying to set up. Lust itself should be an immense hindering factor for a demesne user, many of them do not know how to survive without that demesne, especially if they keep losing eq to turn it back on.

My biggest concern is power. A lot of my afflictions cost me so much power that I run out if the fight goes on longer than 10 or so minutes. Between Fool, Wrath, and Dazzle, I'm spending a ton of power. Practice, I'm sure, would make me more efficient in my offense.

Protection scrolls help too, and yes love totally messes stuff up because we have to keep rejecting you

Protection scrolls are used for going in by the way, don't keep putting them up in the middle of combat as they're visible going up AND visible when you read them and they cost no loss of speed (unless someone's using runes, which they're not, because they're all dreamweaving/psi/eco) to remove.

And don't rely on love too much, as all mages have ways of attacking you without actually being in the room so love doesn't affect them when it ticks if they keep track. (And three of the four have passive ways of moving you out every 10 seconds.)

I read Asmoth's log. A few things you can do are:
-Use protection scroll. But only use it before you enter the demesne and if the mage runs away, it's silly to use it otherwise as it takes 4 seconds of balance and the mage can dissolve it without even pausing in their offense.
-Use love potion like Xenthos said.
-Use lust tarot if you have it. Particularly, use it while you have fool up, so they can't see it.

Quickened cosmicfire will drop nearly any mage or druid. We're not tanky targets. Regular cosmicfire, however, will not. Get stupidity to stick for a second or two, abjure quickening, count out those eternal four seconds, then get to blasting.

Love is awesome against a demesne user. Standard time to reject is 4 seconds. I found it to really hinder my offense sometimes, because I either attack you, or keep my demesne going.

One thing I noticed in your log was all you did was hangman/aeon. And you didn't even aeon twice in a row. A single aeon is useless since all it does is strip quicksilver, you have to do it twice in a row to hope sticking aeon on someone. One good tactic is just have your angel do anorexia/stupidity while you aeon whore.