Pollute(trans Geomancy) = Heartstop, because just like heartstop as soon as we use it, we're dead.

<----Me first time I used pollute

Gravel shield? Why not just use some form of magnetism? Then when Aeromancers come you can combine powers and make electromagnetism. Hey, it'd be cool.

They have a mix of cold, heat, and asphyxiation for all three forms of water: ice, liquid water, and steam. It seemed more original for them to deal in all forms of water rather than just one. Heat just happens to be the primary attack.

As an interesting note, Lusternia seems to have fallen into the same pit that Achaea is.. Namely everyone's so tanky it's impossible to kill with outright damage... That's why the Mages are weak.. All they have is damage and some easily cured afflictions.

Um, Magi can wear helmets? I could have sworn I tried wearing one before and wasn't able to.

Not everyone is that tanky, only damage knights, and with numbness having been made useless, that's changing too. If a mage tries to kill a high level knight in his demesne, he'll have a lot of trouble, but place a guardian or other mage in it, and the odds will turn. Tho one thing I gotta agree on, aquamancer and druid staff assault sucks the shizzles, a geomancer staffcasts me for easily 800-1100, but an aquamancer will do about 400-500 at the very most, while a druid's was doing 250-300, at trans druidry and 14 int, some mages need some more firepower, like have their staffcasts do 50-80% more damage if they're inside their demesne. I think a mage should have mediocre offense and be very vulnerable outside their demesne, but have massive firepower and be mediocre tanky inside their demesne.

14 int for a druid whos attack is magical based is rather low compared to other people, for example, most celestines are merians, and after novicehood I have 18 int, 19 with luck from fortuna.
That might explain some of the difference.

I don't Pk

2880h, 3420m, 2238e, 10p ex-inv
You are wielding a kite shield in your left hand and a twisted staff in your
right hand.


You are wearing:
a black leather and silk backpack, a skull shaped stud, an open-faced plume
crested helm, a long dark coat, billowing black robes, a pair of black shoes, a
golden crescent shaped spiked stud, a pair of black silk boxer shorts, an iron
shackle bracelet, a silver eyebrow hoop set with a ruby, a simple silver hoop.

Pff, im a Hartstone elfen with 17 int, and we do the worse damage ever...maybe our demesnes our better than geomancers and aquamancers but still, the damage we do and the defense we have is the suck!...i get hit for 1.2k damage by an average knight (without being their strongest attack), the other day i was also testing a few things out with nikua and he hit me for 1.6k without being his strongest attack, its just insane, nature barkskin definately needs to be better or at least some kind of demesne protection skill so we can protect ourselves...

sorry for the double post...
Druids are not meant for combat maybe, but at least making us better for bashing with more defence would be nice...

Whoever put moondancers/nihilists/(possibly Celestines) is joking, right? RIGHT?

I hope so, this is the way I see it in fighting tersm in the order of from worst to best:

Aquamancers/Geomancers (tied)--------- Hartstone ---- Serenguard ---- Paladins -- Ur'Guard ------- Celestines -- Nihilists ------------------- Moondancers

The - represents how fr between each one.

And cause I want to test out new smilies:

hehehehehe

You may find it interesting to know that a member of the Hartstone (a Hartstoner?) wiped the floor with everyone else during closed beta. And we also had a Geomancer dominating much combat. They gave rise to worry that the demesne archetypes were overpowered. Were they a fluke, or are the people who joined those guilds just not using their skills effectively? (I could possibly see the latter with the Hartstone since the nature guilds, independent of game, tend to attract a lot of people who are more into hedonism than warfare...)

After a quick trip to dictionary.com, I can say that's might be true. Although I still learn combat skills just because I can, and I might one day like to be a good fighter, at the moment I'm really just here for the roleplay.

I'd like to see Aquamancers have more of a defensive role. While many of the skills are technically 'defensive', they aren't really directly defensive like a shield would be. They are more like 'this spell pushes an enemy out of the room' which is really strategically difficult to use unless you're one person fighting against many.

I love the idea of a water caster, hardly any muds I have played have water casters or even any spells related to water besides one here or there. I think it can be more useful than just making big waves, though.

EDIT:

Not to mention, Guardian classes and Hartstone have a lot more interesting secondary skills... Aquamancers and Geomancers get illusions and runes, which are slightly boring on top of being relatively useless. And, they hardly relate to being a Water or Earth caster. It'd be nice if the secondary skills were more directly related to our guilds, instead of just random stereotypical Mage skills.

I think the Archetype scale goes like this, with minor differences in specific classes.

Warriors-Offense, plain and simple

Guardians-A mix of Offense and Defense

Mages-Pure Defense.

Your Demense has uber (ha) capabilities. It might take a bit of doing, but imagine if you had the entirety of a village as your demense. I'm pretty sure there are some skills that work demense wide (in fact I KNOW there are for Geomancers) and you can simply say 'Shield now' or whatever over CT so you can hit those invading. You're not meant to go charging headfirst staff ablazin, and maybe future changes will show this (such as more defences than say the Warriors, who are all about dealing damage).

That's not a bad idea, Aris, but as of right now, Magi classes have the worst defensive capacities of any classes. We don't even get a single hinderance ability such as web, hangman, or sleep to slow someone that's beating the living daylight out of us.

It would be potentially powerful to have an entire area melded in and hinder or damage our enemies, but that's assuming that Aquamancers can do damage with their demesne. Only icefloes (afflicts with cold damage) and jellies (stuns) really do anything to anyone, and those are horribly weak. I'd rather trade useless or bugged skills like currents, tsunami, typhoon, jellies, bubble, liquidform, and whirlpool for a single ability that is actually useful in combat. At least Geomancers have better demesne-based damage. I'm not too sure how powerful Wiccans are with their swarms, spores, storm, and thorns in their demesne but I can guess at least they do more than 0 damage with their demesne.

Aris, I think your looking at Achaea, and not Lusternia.

EDIT: none of that made sense..

Mages = good in really specific situations
Guardians Good at defending areas and people
Warriors good at attacking areas and people.