DISCLAIMER: I am not posting this to try and get it nerfed or threatening to deprive you all of my presence. I just feel like bringing it up to see what people think.

Basically, if one attacks a Magnagora village or a Celest village, it will be demesned, and if the demesne owner is online you get hit with demesne effects, they can travel to you instantly or summon you into their group, guards and statues.

If one attacks a Serenwilde village that is demesned and the demesne owner is not around there are no effects, but any Serenwilde member can still use the existence of the demesne to summon you or travel to you (maybe not Serenguard but the point is many more than just the 1 player can do one or the other or both).

Thus, the city villages are much more vulnerable any time the 1 demesne owner is not online and active, while the Serenwilde villages always can always gain immediate coverage. The ability to travel to someone in a forest does not seem to be effected by range either, so the "I don't want to walk all the way there, they'll be gone by the time I arrive" factor doesn't exist for Serenwilde either.

I'm not saying this should be downgraded at all, I've done my share of bitching for awhile. What I am saying is, moondancers really don't need constant passive shield breaking etc. Serenwilde has many advantages that the cities don't have anything comparable to.

You have catacombs...and teleport. (To the person as did catacombs, that is.)

Catacombs takes gold and commodities and doesn't take you straight to the target. People attacking a village don't sit there and let you teleport to them.

I know this isn't quite your point, but couldn't you just unmeld when you left, and have someone else meld it? This would be a pain for a 400 room demesne, but you don't need a huge demesne to protect one village.

Yeah, I edited too late. I meant, you could just teleport into the catacombser. And if you're worried about flow messing you up, you can always just taint it before they get the chance. (Well, it's not infallible, but still.) How much money does a catacombs take? Just curious.

I could do these things if I were a geomancer

If we got a really good system going where people take shifts with various villages then I suppose we could get the same effect, though the geomancers are one of the smallest guilds (bottom of topguilds right now) and have a lot of demand on them already, so it seems unlikely to happen/work.

Tarot cards are cheap, though catacombs takes a lot of palette charges. I've tried asking for catacombs and usually can't get one.

Well, yeah, but -Magnagora- can do it.

Whereas, say, a Serenguard can't. If it has to be class specific...

Catacombs only takes 2 charges, same as Aeon....and it's easy to get palettes mad now, even master palettes are cheap and not to hard to find. Tarot is nowhere as expensive as it once was.

Saying a Serenguard can't but Magnagora can is false. Serenguard might not have flow or wisp, Geomancers and ur'Guard don't have tarot.

I'm not sure I follow. Your argument is that Serenwilde has the village defence because Moondancers & Hartstone can flow and Serenguard can follow them to get their speedily, well, Nihilists can catacombs and Geomancers & Ur'guard can follow them (I think) or teleport in (I know.) ...wisp has nothing to do with it, as far as I know.

If you really don't understand the basic argument then I don't think I can help you.

It's true I can get a catacombs half the time, catacombs is less effective and more expensive (not free in terms of time and gold and comms) than flow. And that is how catacombs relates to this thread.

Wisp does have bearing on the subject for two simple reasons. For one, its a instant summon that can be done in any forest, natural/unnatural, and so can be used in villages. For two, a ability to instantly summon someone into guards that is shared by a large group obvious advantage over a ability to do the same thing but only one person is able to do it at time.

I personally want to see both instant summons weakened, or given a 100% counter though.

Jello-

Aren't you forgetting that Geomancers have demesne summon? Yeah, it can only be used when the Geomancer is around, but that is still a pretty damn useful ability to quickly break up a raiding group and summon right into guard/statue. So Serenwilde has the advantage of mobility when it comes to defending our villages and commune and wisp, Mag and Celest has the advantage of bringing the fights to their place of choosing in addition to quick and rapid transport via Catacombs or ways to bypass defenses via ghost. Each faction has its own advantages and weaknesses, you can't expect each one to have everything.

Jello's not complaining about it Terenas, he's saying they have the advantages they're not realizing. Their demesne being an effective defense even while it's not actively melded by someone in realms, by creating an instant flow ability for 2/3 of Serenwilde's guilds, altering land terrain to allow wisp to function within the villages to pull raiders into statues guards. Sure Geomancers and Aquamancers can demesne summon, but they also have to be there active to do it.

How does village defending factor into invididual fighting though? Yes, wisp and flow are great for defending villages and such, but that has nothing to do with invididual fighting or combat ability. Flow and wisp aren't going to help if you're dueling someone and your faes die in 2 seconds or your opponent just repeatedly shield.

You also fail to realize that against a Serenwilder, demesne summon more than likely will NOT work. I've even tested on Athana with all her summon defenses up. I summoned her about 15 times and it went through twice. For 3 power per summon, that's a problem I'd rather not face

That misses the point. Demesne summon may be resisted, but there is no way to 100% stop it because it goes through both shield and monolith. If a raiding group stays in an area long enough, they will be summoned into a statue + guards. This allows 1 mage to defend an entire village against even a large number of raiders.

In contrast, a large group raiding a Serenwilde village can drop a monolith, smite away, get monolith, move, drop monolith, repeat -- Forcing defenders to come to them.

And if you look at it from the other side of the coin, necromancers by far have the advantage when raiding, mainly due to both ghost and lich, especially when combined with Ur'guard tankiness or Nihilist catacombs/hermit.

If a necromancer is wisp or demesne summoned into statue+guards+monolith, they ghost and leave. If they die, they can lich and exit the village without losing the 70% or so experience attached to dying in enemy territory.

If a moondancer is demesne summoned into statue+guards+monolith, they have to get off the monolith in order to get away. If they die, then bye bye 70% experience.

Seriously, if anybody should be complaining, it should be Celest. They have the same demesne summon as the geomancers but probably the weakest raiding skills (overall).

I agree with Dumihru. We do have an advantage, you're quite right. But then, Magnagora has its own large advantages, and maybe Celest does too. (Though I can't think of any large ones, so maybe you're right that Celest needs something) Just for clarity, while in forest Moondancers have three extra things we can do:

- Flow (arguably the most powerful, takes equilibrium on arrival though)
- Wisp (easily blocked by monoliths)
- Vines (our only entanglement, identical to novice web... meanwhile we have none outside the forest)

There are ways to get more or less the same advantages, not as quick as flow but you can be in your villages pretty fast. I won't explain here how you can do it but if you think a while you might get the idea.
Flow is of course still better but where we have this little advantage we have certain disadvantages at other places.

Not enough demand it seems. I'm a Geomancer as well but I was thrown out and no one has ever coming asking me about going back in. Which is fine, if they are going to be that way. The reason they are one of the smallest Guilds is...

a. What is the motiviation? The Guild is stagnant.

b. You have rogue Geomancers about. Go talk to them instead of trying to kill them.

c. You have _what_ for novice requirements?

d. Umm.. Ohhh right.. Magnagora, where only a few in a certain group lead. Now who would want to live there?

e. Our demesnes aren't even good...