I know what my demesne has, and I stated what was required for needlerain to allow for the frozen condition to happen in one go.

It is funny how you are complaining about this, when there is a half-health insta-kill in Achaea that was not as hard to pull off. What is it called, Inferno? I can't remember the name, but all the Sentinel or Druid needed to do was get the person below half-health, with the fire ready to go. Here we have added two more restrictions to the equation, power and the frozen state. Seriously, if you think this is so easy to pull off, then you must have been getting your butt kicked by druids and sentinels left and right in Achaea.

Incinerate!

Thank you, I knew it started with an In.

Because you know how incredibly hard it is to cast Earthquake, stonewalls, rubbles, and chasm someone, especially with dustorm hiding all the available exits. Chasm was the single best and fastest instantkills. If you think it didn't need some looking at, then you can't say much for your objectivity either.

I'm not complaining about the dilute replacement, I'm just telling you it's easier to pull off than you seem to present it, you really don't need a team to pull it off.

Aquamancers do a lot of damage with their staff. Sentinels and druids got stuck with Maul, which is weaker than my cudgel. Incinerate was nice, but it wasn't as great as you make it sound.

I have to agree. I don't remember ever having gotten incinerated on Achaea by any Druids or Sentinels and I fought some of the best like Rangor and Geraint.

How many times have you been frozen and below half-health here, Terenas?

Once or twice.

I was only agreeing that incinerate is a horrible comparison to a decent instant kill anyway. Not saying that your new one looks all that overpowered as well. Chasm is still far better IMO.

The fact is that a half-health instakill for aquamancers is really unbalancing simply because an aquamancer's damage output is already insane as it is. In a demesne, there's really no question as to who will win now. Aqua's got thrown a gigantic bone here.

I would agree with you somewhat their damage output is high, but to have you frozen and below half health is exceedingly rare, especially if you're a decent healer. It appears this would be far far harder to pull off against any good fighters than Geomancer's Chasm or Druid's Sap. Aside from that, if you're going below half health, then it's much easier for them to just staff you to death rather than waste time trying to freeze as well.

Remember the number of purgative cured runes, too.

That's right, all of them.

They ain't throwing you off THAT balance. Freezing should be fairly easy to resist.

It sounds easy to cure freeze and honestly in all theoretical outlines it is, but when actually applied to a battle situation, there are tons of things going on, and when a demesne is passively freezing you and stripping your fire defence while worrying about everything else the mage is throwing at you, it can be quite easy to miss a simple "sip fire". You'll see that when mages start developing tactics for this move, it will be far easier than you think, and much much deadlier than chasm EVER was. Might even give soulless a run for its money

The simple fact is that this skill requires the target to be at half-health and in the frozen state. For a decent healer, pulling off the new aquamancer insta-kill will not be an easy feat solo. If the person so happens to be hurt enough that he or she could not sip health and sip fire before the aquamancer regains equilibrium, than that person probably would have died to damage anyway.

Aquamancers have no way to obstruct a person’s sipping besides the passive stun (once every 10 seconds for 2 seconds), the use of the cen rune (stupidity) if a runic mage, or sleep, narcolepsy, and blackout if a dreamweaver. Yes, ignite could be used, but the damage from ignite can easily be ignored in favor of curing the frozen state. Also, have you noticed that cleanse will now cure the burning state? A simple solution to it all is to make sure you sip fire when you see needlerain hit, and/or sip fire when blackout hits. Either way, it will go a long way towards keeping a person out of the frozen state.

Oh, sure, it would be easy for ME to miss a sip fire in the middle of all the spam, but if you have any sort of decent system it shouldn't happen to you.

I'll give you this task to do, Revan. If you feel you are right, come up with a tactic that will easily allow the insta-kill to occur via the efforts of a single Aquamancer. Do like I have done concerning chasm and dreamwaving, show how it can work. I’ve noticed that you use plenty of the tactics that others around here have stated are possible, when you try to chasm people. I now charge you will supplying knowledge to the pool, and show everyone how a tactic you devised could cause the aquamancer insta-kill to be easily accomplished.

Please don't compare Chasm and Sap. One is an instakill, one let's us actually stack some damage, and is curable. Sap is great, but it's not an instakill by any means.

Meh, must I?

Ok: Chasm is stopped by several things. Lover's tarot (or similar spells), peace hex (or similar spells), flying, running, burrowing, killing the mage. I used to be 10 seconds (according to Hajamin. I was lead to believe it was 7 seconds, and still actually do). Chasm is NOW 12 seconds. So... 12 seconds of the mage doing absolutely nothing. What can you do? Oh lots. It has been said many many times before that if you're a decent fighter, you will NEVER get chasmed. Hell, I'll trade the new Aquamancer instakill for chasm because its craploads better than a 12 second instakill. If you cannot find a way to stop a chasm in 12 bloody seconds now, you have no right to call yourself a fighter.

Will do. I'll get to it after I fill my noggin with useless biology information for my final =p

It has been brought to my attention that some people may not understand what the frozen state is. I know most of you do, but for those who may not know or remember, this information is for you.

A character can have four health states when it comes to freeze. The most desired state for a person is to have the fire defense in place. With that defense up, the person will be protected from one freeze or one icefloe cycle, which would strip the fire defense in the process. The second state is to have no defense. If freeze or a cycle of icefloe hits the person, that person would then be moved into the shivering state (third for our purposes). If the person is shivering, one more freeze or icefloe cycle will put the person in the frozen solid state (Last condition). The new aquamancer insta-kill requires the target to be frozen solid with his or her health below half.