What nonsense. That's like saying if Tuek was leading a bunch of lousy Serens against Daevos and Murphy, and they all die, Tuek is lousy.

I do not believe you guys are overpowered. I believe you have some powerful skills and combinations, but every community has that. I do agree that you do have a bunch of very dedicated players in your city, and that does make your city the premier one in the realm.

Do I believe the administration is persecuting you guys because you are very good fighters? No, I do not. Do I believe you guys are any better than what can be found in other cities? No, not really. Perhaps you do have more who desire to fight, but each person from each community could find a counterpart in another community when it comes to raw fighting skill (If one is not present, one could be easily grown in no time). So I was just pointing out that your greatness stems more from your dedication to spend the time and resources needed to acquire any assets you desire and not really your over all superiority in IRE combat skills.

This is for your next post about the team ffa:

As you have admitted, not all of those he had under his command were lousy. Anyhow, the advantage was theirs. By all rights, Lazul and I should have been easily defeated. Simple coordination of hindering attacks and summoning would have worked. Another simple hindering tactic could have been just to have everyone sip love, and cause me to become lusted to him or her. I don't reject, and the demesne is not hitting that particular person. I do reject, and that is 5 seconds that I am unable to perform any balance or equilibrium requiring action other than writhe.

I don't think we've ever claimed we're far superior to every one else. According to you, we have dedication, which implies that Seren and Celest are not as dedicated as we are, and are therefore not really tapping into the unused potential we see in other skillsets like moon and sacraments. If we were put into Seren and Celestian shoes, I believe we would still be just as dedicated, so we would still be as successful, and people would still complain, because our success would still be seen as overpoweredness, as usual. (case study: putre being called "godly", when it is subject to it's own set of limitations. I wish for just one day, for Celestians and Serens to be able to use putre as it was originally, as it was when it was just modified, and as it is now.)

We're not the Invincible Kings and Queens of the Combat World, we worked to get to where we are. I had practically no combat experience before this, and while I'm still not good, I don't think I'm all that lousy either. I worked to get putre, ghost, lichdom, tumble, etc, I bashed to get my levels and I learned to make a hodgepodge system from scratch. I still suck at curing, and my offense is still... lousy... but ah well. I'd say most Mags work harder than I do, and contributions to the city are noted and rewarded. That applies to everyone, whether they're well-known, or a nobody.

If, like you say, it's easily rectifiable with training, experience or acquiring a system, then you have no one but yourselves to blame if most of you haven't made an effort to get those, because it's not like any of those are exclusively available to Mags.

See Geb, if we fight you guys, we'd have an intimate knowledge of our own skills, and would be able to say oh, you just had to do this and this, and you'd have beaten us, hand down. By all rights, we should have been easily defeated as well, but we'll just call you lousy, because you didn't know our weaknesses.

Unless you have surefire tactics to beat any combination of Magnagorans, I honestly don't think you have a right to say that they're lousy because of that.

The sip love tactic is simple, very much so, but it's not one that comes straight to my mind because it is rarely used, possibly because most of ooa demesneing occurs over a huge stretch of land, and the mage is usually sitting in some out of the way, un-lovelustable spot. At least, it doesn't come to mind often for me, because I don't fight in the arena much, and ooa I'm rarely ever in the same room as the mage whose demesne I'm currently being stung, frozen or paralyzed by. Running around getting everyone lusted to me is just annoying.

That must have been one helluvan ffa though if, I assume from what you're saying, everyone had time to sit down and plan a strategy, but just failed to do so.

Actually they did, because it would have been suicide for Lazul and me to go after them. We had to sit in the demesne and wait, because that was the only way we could maintain some chance of survival.

Also, I did not call them lousy. You are the one that used lousy as an example about Tuek leading some lousy Serenwilde fighters. I was just stating that even according to you, the people Murphy had were not all lousy.

No, but you're saying that Murphy should bear responsibility for the whole team failing to come up with a strategy and losing, which implies that he was a bad leader.

Everyone makes mistakes once in a while, and being a top fighter does not necessarily mean they're automatically a great team leader. Individual tactics and group tactics are way different. Some people are good at one, and not so great at the other.

If I'm the best fighter fighter in the group, but I'm not good at team strategy, am I to blame if we're not very well co-ordinated?

Not saying this IS the case here, but it MAY be.

Let's have a team FFA.

Ru, you're a nut... but a good nut

yu're forgetting one point there geb, your demesne moves us around randomly, not to mention you killed me via bubble/strip, which you saw the envoyu post, 6k to nothing, and i couldn't do ANYTHING. I was effectvley out of the action, not only that, you were moving around too AND you can't follow people in the arena. It's hard to co-ordinate a bunch of people when you can't follow.

also when we hit the demesne, jellies hit us straight up, and then moved us in and out of rooms.

I'd like to say again, we had tactics all planned out, but your demesne was too good, and I got bubbled, which yes, it was good tactic on your part and basically killed me with nothing I could do about it....but don't sit there and tell me I'm a bad leader when I was bubbled. Demesnes are godly against a team, and basically the rest of the team couldn't handle a demesne except marcalo and revan and me. So basically it got turned into a 3 on 2, with lazul being greater than me in damage, and geb being greater than revan PLUS in a demesne PLUS I got instakilled. The rest of them didn't matter, because the demesne took care of them. I guarantee if you were a warrior or guardian in that fight geb we would've won easy

That's great in theory, but it's like the 'send good kids to bad schools to make them better' idea: no one wants it to happen to them, because it's far too important.

As soon as you suggest a downgrade in your envoy report, it's implemented. So no one wants to be that unlucky guild.

I guess that last part is open to speculation. I do not see it as being easily won by you if I was a warrior either, but we could debate on that another time. You do have to remember that I would easily have the full set of warrior artifacts and skills (serpent), along with my ability to change my race once a month.

*Response is directed to Murphy.*

see, all we had to do if you were a warrior, was have people web you, say, have bric hinder you while i beat on you. Then revan and marcalo could hit up lazul, keeping you down. If we didn't win it, we would have easily put up a much better show

sorry Geb... we've been in a city together and you've seen how we've tried to train people for Cyrene. It's just not as easy to get people into combat. If you give them a system fine, if you teach tricks here and there fine... but most of the effort to learn anything has to come from them, and if its not their thing who can expect them to learn as much as a person who actually enjoys combat and continually tries to improve in it? Thats how you differentiate a fighter from a non-fighter.

No one said our fighters were the best, i've even said that it wasnt that we were better players somewhere in the thread. The point was, we just have more fighters who can utilize their skills.

While you may not believe what you said you dont believe, this argument was brought up because there were posts suggesting that the reason we were strong was because of the skills. One of those posts were from admin even. You know thats not true or at least not the main reason... as you have said its the dedication.

Well you know me well enough Alger to know I do not always agree with anyone. I recognize the dedication you guys put forward, but I also recognize some advantage that Lich gives. Is it a major advantage that could be debated? I guess the jury is still out on that one. Still, the main ingredient in your city's success is the dedication of the people, and no one in my mind can strip that from you guys.

If so, I'm sure you also recognize the advantages of:

-being able to instantly ressurrect people on the battlefield,
-being able to ressurrect entire armies from across the world,
-being able to instantly transport entire armies to the enemy,
-being able to aeon and damage anyone outdoors across the continent,
-being able to teleport regardless of monoliths to anyone in the area,
-being able to become immune against any attack in whatever state you are,
-being able to dig yourself in and out of safety unstoppably,
-being able to strip and destroy our only advantage, lichdom, forcing us to pray, since we cannot use vitae if we're liched, as it gets stripped upon reforming.

I can go on and on and on with this list, if you really think magnagora had any more hardcoded advantages than serenwilde or celest, at all... you are just plain ignorant and outright dumb. So unless you want to continue this egotripping of yours, come to your senses.

Excrements covered in flashy comments and expensive words, are still excrements.

yes they can geb... dedication is tied with morale... and if we're getting axed because of our dedication then it becomes very demoralizing. I'm sure admin doesnt view it as that and balance is always hard to look at. But honestly when I see skills like putre getting hit like that then i just dont know what to say.

Back to putre, I want it back. And I would willingly accept a power cost to have it back. But I stand by my opinion that the skill was never overpowered, and it did not need to be downgraded more than once.

Daevos, would you agree to a 4-5 power and a 40-50 second putre?

if it was returned to normal.

If it reduced ALL damage to half, rather than physical damage to a third, I don't doubt it.

It's not going to be as great as numen!