Many times in the past, it was brought up how unfair it was that druids can meld Cosmic, but magi can't meld Ethereal. There are a few balance issues that I would like to point to.

Here are the combat skills that I, as a druid, cannot use outside of the forest, excluding demesne effects:

Sap - my primary killing move, and I personally cannot kill without it.
Thornlash/rend - my secondary killing move, even though I vastly perfer Sap.
Sapling - illusionary terrain works anywhere, for the record
Treebane - this is not a demesne effect, but an active affliction
Vines
Raise cudgel
Twirl cudgel
Pathtwist - not like I use it anyway, but still!
Blend
Flow

Blacktalon can't use perch or swoop, their third and final killing move, outside of the forest either.

Magi, on the other hand, have no skills they are unable to use outside water/taint except for demesne effects. For instance, their primary group skill, Hailstorm/boulderblast, works just fine outside of water/taint, whereas ours (thornlash/rend), doesn't. Even on Ethereal, Magi can still terrain after breaking a druidic meld, though a Druid on Cosmic couldn't plant a sapling in the water after removing an aquamancer meld. This gives Magi on unterrainable Etherwilde a vast advantage over Druids on an unterrainable Celestia.

Thus, making Cosmic unterrainable by druids would create a complete imbalance, since Druids would then lose all of their killing power while on the plane, whereas magi do not lose any of their killing power while on Ethereal.


In other words, the difference is far more than just about the demesnes.

I'm not even sure it would make it fair if druids could continue melding Cosmic, and magi were able to meld Etherwilde/Etherglom, since geomancers defoliate when they terrain, making it so that druids would be unable to use their own skills on their own sacred plane.

What I feel would be fair compromises:

o First:
- Ethereal remains unterrainable/unmeldable by magi.
- Cosmic becomes unterrainable/unmeldable by druids.
- Dryad trees make the room count as forest for the purposes of all druidic non-demesne skills, such as thornlash/rend and sap.

o Second:
- Cosmic becomes terrainable, but unmeldable by druids.
- Ethereal becomes terrainable, but unmeldable by magi.
- Tainting an Etherwilde/Etherglom room does not remove the forest attribute (flooding already doesn't).

o Third:
- Cosmic remains terrainable and meldable by druids.
- Ethereal becomes terrainable, but unmeldable by magi.
- Tainting an Etherwilde/Etherglom room does not remove the forest attribute (flooding already doesn't).

Don't forget our loyal stags! Which do absolutely nothing outside forest. They don't do all that much inside either, but at least they try.

What do they do for us?

Knock people into trees only if they fully capable of climbing back down

dryad trees...? please no. I don't want wiccan's being used as the beef up to druids to even them with mages again. We all know what happens in that situation.

Still waiting for willowisp 2.0

I hate how we're so reliant on forest. Yes, it makes tons of sense from an RP angle, but from a balance perspective, it's total crap. If we're going to lose so many skills outside of forest, we should have a definite advantage inside forest. The trend has been to nerf that advantage, and leave the disadvantage.

I actually like the idea of Wiccans and Druids beefing eachother up. It gives a larger distinction between Cities and Communes.

Agreed. But no matter how many times this is pointed out, everyone wants those fundamental advantages in forest to disappear, leaving only our complete uselessness outside of it.

Hrm. I'm fine with forest abilities working in tainted or flooded forest locations, though there ought to be some disadvantage - make some of them less effective, or allow only a couple to work, or something. Maybe don't allow sap in tainted forest, as a result of the corrupt earth element reducing the the trees to dry husks, and disable vines in flood, due to them being all bloated and floppy and... stuff.

Except there are no trees in Tainted forest. You can't climb. The trees are all withered away and destroyed, essentially.

But I guess you could make the argument that the base environment is still there and able to respond to the Druid, breaking through the taint to at least create vines and such.

I actually like that Druids are so dependent on environment, it both distinguishes us from mages and makes RP sense... but like Shorlen is pointing out, it has to be factored into balance considerations.

We should be a STRONG class in our environment, because we are UBERWEAK outside it. At the moment, we're pretty average against mages in our demesne, although its not too bad.

Your environment is anywhere. You can forest. If you were stronger than all other classes inside forest, you'd be stronger than all other classes, period, except maybe mages.

...as a demense user, you should know how stupid that statement is.

They're not asking to be any stronger inside forests, they're just asking to be less useless outside of them.

And yeah, mage/druid terrain can be cleared by other mages/druids or prevented from occuring in the first place by illusions/saplings/melds. Also, trueground! So you can't just say, "You can make forest wherever you want and then use all your skills!".

My point is that, if druids were just plain better inside forests, that would make them unbalanced. As it stands, Druidry is useless until you forest the room - But I never understood why people whine so much about it. The skill requires preparation. That makes it better if you're defending, and makes it slower to kill/worse if you're jumped or jumping someone. You can just ignore it (Which is, admittedly, only really viable for mages) or you can bother to raise a forest, which almost evens things unless you're fighting a mage or another druid (Or someone who'll bother to use trueground, but you can always meld). Practically all classes have some degree of build up before they can use their finishing moves.

ETA: Yes, I know about illusions/sapling/meld. I'm talking about a fight on clean terrain. And I'm all for making druids less dependant on forest, even though it dillutes the class' roleplay somewhat.

And what do you do if you *cannot* forest in a place? No amount of preparation overcomes that.

I don't want to be less dependent on forest.

And why can't one class be slightly stronger than another head-to-head in a certain environment? Especially if they are much weaker when that environment is taken away.

Warriors are designed to be stronger than all other classes when faced directly.

Not letting druids demesne cosmic would be stupid. Just let mages demesne ethereal.

Wrong. With dryad trees, it is possible to use Sap, Treebane, Raise Cudgel, Twirl Cudgel. Thus in your own words, you are capable of using your primarily killing move. I am unsure if Thornlash/rend is possible, but it might be. This leaves you unable to sapling (which cannot be fairly compared to illusionary terrain because there are advantages to it not being usable everywhere like that tree in Faethorn that took -18- f-ing chops to cut down).

Vines can be easily substituted with a Web enchantment. Pathtwist isn't ever used as you said. This leaves you more-or-less at a loss with only Blend (which you get perma shroud at night with Night Totem and Ecologists get camouflage) and Flow (which is insanely powerful on the sole basis it only works in a forest).



Wrong again. I as an Aquamancer cannot use Deluge (which isn't a demesne effect), Whirlpool (which isn't a demesne effect), Travel (if you are listing Flow, I'm using Travel), Bubble, and Liquidform. Geomancers cannot use Travel, Chasm, or Fleshstone.



If you want to argue that Druids are in many ways more restricted - fine. To say that Geomancers, for example, do not lose any "killing" power when they cannot chasm though is simply false.

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I think the situation as it is IS fine right now. It isn't even, but it never will be because that is a sacrifice when making anything unique. On that note, however, I do feel no side has a truly superior advantage so why fix what isn't broken? The only factor, strangely enough, that bugs me is that Communes get a totem on Ethereal, whereas cities do not get a statue.

No