I know there are a lot of changes going in, so I don't expect immediate admin response or anything of the sort. I just think the imbalance between stag and crow needs to be discussed.

Crowform:
lvl 2 regen while flying
faster movement while flying
1p eyepeck (eyepeck is essentially a useless skill)
Occasionally dodge geyser and hexagram while flying
+1 Intelligence
Truecaw drains mana
Swoop requires the target to be on the ground, crow user must be in the trees and perched. Does damage to health and mana. If target is below 1/4th mana, instakill.

Stagform:
lvl 1 regen always
faster movement always
0p parade(lust) and 2p Stagstomp (useful for druids with sap)
2p gore. Cutting damage. Impales if target is at 50%. Instakills if target is below 25% health
+1 dex


Other issues:
Medicine bag takes the place of a sip. It serves as a double sip, essentially. Crow has regurgitate. Heals 1/4th of max health with a lengthy eq loss.

Stag masks can boost eq or balance. Not great since the new change, but still useful. Crow masks can either see dreamforms, occasionally dodge webs(very infrequent), occasionally resist bone breaks, or gain power after killing a player.

Stagstomp requires the target to be prone. Breaks legs and knocks off equilibrium. Very useful for druids. Crow has eyepeck. It steels an eye and you can watch the former owner of the eye from your nest.



Overall I find Crow to be mostly flavour while Stag has real utility. Medicinebag is just an amazing skill. Regurgitate requires me to remove myself from a combat situation, and halt all offense and defense to heal while medicine bag fits seemlessly in with offense and defense. The masks for crow are generally useless and fire far too little to actually make a difference. Crow has skills like Trickster, spy, disease, and decoy that have either no or extremly limited use. Don't get be wrong, some of crow is useful. Things like the dodging while flying can be useful, and have saved me once or twice. However the regen and faster movement while flying is much less favourable to constant speed boost and regen. I mean really, how often do you fight while flying? Both sides have rezz skills involving totems. Stag has stagtotem, however. Heals all allies' health, mana, and afflictions on a tic. Then there is the the actual combat skills of stagstomp and gore which can be very useful in situations, while swoop is generally a pain. It requires your target to be on the ground, but they must be in the trees for sap.

Anyways. These are just my opinions. Feel free to disagree. If you just look at the Stag and Crow files on scrying pool you should be able to notice a real imbalance in usefulness.

Your gore info is outdated. Gore impales 33% of the time regardless.

You missed a vital spot on crow. Dark rebirth? no exp loss is a huge thing.

Also, flying is a huge advantage. You get it free. Others pay 450 credits just to fly.

+intelligence > +dex

agree that medbag/stagtotem rock socks.

stag face painting reduces the bal/eq of the oppositve however. So faster balance means slower eq. or vice versa.

Eyepeck is far from useless. it's a regeneration cure which is nice especially if you get both eyes.

Swoop+truecaw is > gore

I tried to keep it just these two skills, but also if you compare the druidry of each guild, BT wins. Not only do they have 1 more demesne effect, but they have a passive affliction from the pet crow which uberpwns all other demesne pets.

Are you talking about the murder that replaces squirrels? It's either damage, blindness, or black lung. Nice but...nothing to get jazzed about.

What xp death overhaul thing? *peer*

And you can eyepeck two eyes, eyepecking both eyes gives blindness which requires regen to cure.

You can't eyepeck krokani cause then its only 1 peck to blindness, and super percpetive one eyed monsters are immune to blindness or something. Or thier giant eye is just too big to be pecked!

+50 cudgel damage is, still, better than +1...uhm. I don't really know what to even do with it.

As for gore, yeah, it's pretty nice, but in the worst case scenario if you're going for Impale you'd need to spend 6p to do so.

PS: You guys have trickster. Nerf.

You know, the whole constuct thing. Dark rebirth, or so I hear, will be a conglute level xp loss.

And I'm going to smack you Alianna. Trickster makes me cry.

Stag > Crow, when you compare the skills in the skillset. Crow's saving grace is Rebirth, which is getting fixed. The extra demesne thing is in Druidry, not Crow (though it is learned by skillchoice selecting Crow... eh, whatever). Especially when it comes to a Warrior skillchoice. Nestcall versus Stagtotem, Regurgitate versus Medicinebag, Stagform versus Crowform... sigh.

Bonenose and spiderweb are okay, though!

What daganev said about eyepeck. I'm not sure about the demesne thing I talked about specifically. Xiel pointed it out to me as I built up my list of Hartstone changes that I'm never gonna need anymore. Below is something contributed by Narsrim. At the very least, I'll add in that medbag does not get influenced by philosopher stone. I've never been a sip bonus race to know if it does with racial bonus or not.



Even if Dark Rebirth is set to give a minor experience loss, the ability to -never- be at risk of praying on the Prime Material Plane is incredibly useful. It's a resurrection feature Stag doesn't have so trying to ignore it is silly.

Medicine Bag is not equivalent to a double sip. It does cure more than normal sipping, but it isn't subject to sipping bonuses. The specialized race for Glomdoring is Faeling, which has a sip bonus that -stacks- with the philosopher stone (which to my knowledge, medicine bag is not influenced by a philosopher stone).

The Crow pet has a 100% chance to give black lung (super useful in sap) and is a legendary flying mount. When compared to the 100% chance to knock into trees of a Stag, the Crow pet is >>> the Stag pet.

Spit gives various afflictions that work great in sap locks (and it can give 2 at a time). Being able to give rigormortis, dysentry, blacklung, epilepsy, etc. is quite nice because it helps keep someone off balance such that they cannot cleanse. Given the druid demesne has a chance to give confusion (there is also a confusion rune) and dysentry and blacklung knock off equilibrium, this stacks up quite well (dysentry will throw off equilibrum 2 seconds every 10, 4 if confused; etc).

Perch is the -ultimate- druid skill. It impossible to knock a perched Blacktalon out of trees when using twirl cudgel. It provides 100% resistance to hexagram, geyser, etc. Swoop is a nice free perk that not only does health/mana damage for zero power, it sucks the target into trees (and it is faster, a Faeling can perch back-to-back-to-back super fast).

They seem fairly balanced to me.

Is this really supposed to mean anything meaningfull?

two sips = double sip. It may not equal 200% sip, but it does equal double, as in twice as many sips. Perhaps the two sips don't heal the exact same amount, but so what?

90% sip increase is > than the *possible* 40% sip increase that is being compared... more than double the increase infact!

Like I said, that's Narsrim. My opinion is that he's clarifying because that's probably just a habit of his.

@Celina disagree with dark rebirth and the construct egg. I'm sure others will too because dark rebirth guarantees your safety by always returning you home. Egg's don't guarantee it, but if you're well prepared (spores,cubix, various escapes) and assuming you plant it in the area instead of carrying it, then it's almost 100% guarantee.

Eyepeck is just a tiny bit faster than regeneration balance, which means it takes 3x eyepecks to make someone blind. First peck, they apply. Second peck, they wait a fraction of a second for the first to regenerate, then apply again. Third peck, they have no eyes for about a half-second and finally go blind. Then, half a second later, they can eat a myrtle and are all set. That's 9p to achieve without Crowform. 3p with. It's a bit tough in most cases, though I sometimes do it for fun to stack with other regen cures (tendon, lungs, eyepeck, disembowel). That's more for fun though, as it actually slows down my offense instead of really helping it.

Faeling isn't even a skill in Crow. Further, the sip bonus is a counter to the low con. I have no idea how you can try to say it counters the low con and goes above and beyond medicine bag on top of that. It also doesn't seem to be the "Blacktalon Fighter Race of Choice" (not that there are many of them at all). Bit of a stretch there.

Crow pet: Druidry, not Crow.

Spit: What? I have sap now? Yes, it can help with a saplock a bit, but if you're spending time spitting for a random disease and hoping to get the right one that might slow them down later, they're more likely to escape now. That's a lot more of a luck thing than stagstomp (which does have less use for Stag warriors as well, admittedly).

Perch: Most of that stuff is done by cling as well. Perch is cling + some movement resist (thought it was 100% movement resist, but I've been told it's nothing like that by the admin). Also, what are you talking about perching back-to-back very quickly? Once you perch, you cannot perch again. If you mean swoop... the current swoop can be sipped/sparkled off on Faeling balance without any real worry whatsoever, even if the person is thoughtfully climbing down for you every time you swoop them. (I've also been knocked out of the trees by Hexagram while perching, just FYI)

For your perch comments, just wanted to note he said with twirl cudgel. I've never had perch myself, but twirl cudgel is incredible for resisting all summons, movements.

And not like Eyepeck is amazing, but yeah, I just meant that it has those occasional uses. I'm fairly certain you can use eyepeck to perpetuate saplock as well. since if they're blind, I'm not sure they can cleanse cause you generally need to be able to the jewelry you're using.

Though once you get demi, the whole rebirth thing is less of a factor. I'm still of the opinion that you'll never lose demi unless you want to. Even before the latest demi buffer, death essence being halved, I felt it was that way.

Point jewelry doesn't work, but for cleanse you just need to rub, which works.

Doesn't medicinebag take up normal health sip balance, though?

It does.

And with the original faeling sip balance, I hardly noticed much difference in my medicinebag touches and my potion sips. Now that a faeling has a level 3 sip bonus, the sip might be better for them than the actual medicinebag. So granted, medicinebag > healing potion for most other races, but as long as we're taking about faelings then medicinebag doesn't have much more of a point than regurg (though regurg is still pretty crappy in comparison for everyone else).

I would like to add that you can peck out both eyes at once. I got a lovely message, while ruthlessly eyepecking Melville, something along the lines of "Melville has no more eyes to peck out!"

Edit: I got so excited reminiscing about eyepeck that I forgot to add my two cents.

Since a lot of Crow has to do with flying, why not make hoist, our one skill to bring combat into the air, not crap?

Firstly, there is like a two or three second warning before you're hoisted. You would have to be retarded to not shield, or do something else to avoid it. Also, I don't know what causes you to release your grip on people, since that seems to happen on it's own, but people usually fall out about one second after I get balance back.

So, my idea to make this a more useful skill is any or all of the following: less waiting time between the command and the actual hoisting; less balance recovery time; or, entangle the victim.

That's already been said. They can both be picked out (not in the same attack, of course), which makes the person blind until they regenerate one. This takes 3 pecks minimum if they're curing-- more if they're doing anything to slow you down whatsoever. It doesn't work on Krokani because it would be unbalanced due to the Krokani "1 eye"-- they'd be instantly and pretty much permanently blind.

Edit to your edit: If they writhe out, you get the message about releasing your grasp. It does semi-entangle them.

Sorry for the double post, but:

Yes, perch is awesome, and works most of the time. Just yesterday though, Rika hexagrammed me while perched and with twirl up, not just rarely, but at least half of the times she tried it.

Edit Mania to Xenthos: Ok, I only know hoist from my own perspective. (sorry)

What double post?

But thanks for the confirmation on the Hexagram thing.