Dousing and nature rain currently serves very little purpose. As far as I know, the last time we doused, was when Hajamin threw a fit and ignited all the "All That Glitters Is Not Gold" paintings in Magnagora. With the druid demesnes now needing trees, it would make more sense, if they could be ignited, with a low chance of the fire spreading. Would also give more use to the ignite skill and enchantment, since people usually just tumble or leap over icewalls nowadays.

Question is what does setting a forest on fire entail? BReaking the demesne or just the tree? Personally I think if it were to break meld it'd be a bit much but the little trees.. I could imagine.

Just trees would do, so if we leave em long enough, say maybe 5 seconds, the tree will burn down. Saplings faster than established trees of course.

Kills saplings, one every 20-35 seconds.
Kills mature trees, one every 45-55 seconds.
Kills elder trees after two minutes.
Kills totems after seven minutes.
Randomly kills herbs growing in the room.
Randomly sets players in the room on fire.

Sounds good!

Also, afterwords the herbs would grow back at a slightly accelerated rate, to simulate the beneficial effects fire has in nature.

Would we then need a quicker way to get rid of statues?

I say Ignite should just destroy demesne saplings. Much more balanced than the axe chopping. Plus, it'll give enchanters more business!

7 minutes for totems? I should think 4 would do! It's a pretty long time already. 240 seconds, 5 seconds to make a bucket, 1 minute to find a stream, 7 seconds to teleport (optional, since wisp is instant and we're talking about a forest here), douse. Or nature rain, even faster. Wisp, douse. Whee.

And what for? It takes a long while to set a statue up, it also takes a long while to take it down.

No, no no no. It can't touch totems. They take a freaking week to put up, and they can be chopped down in that time. 240 seconds iS LOW for it. (And you can monolith to stop wisps, you know that.)

There is no enchantment that can dispel illusionary terrain. Thus, every single Hartstone without reality check (which is a higher end skill) is screwed without.

All of a sudden, Mages are screwed without chop.... sounds *gasp* fair to me.

If ignite drops demesne saplings, that's sort of pointless. Ignite is available to noob mages, while druids need a decently high discernment ability to take out Terrain. That just isn't cool. Maybe if it took NUMEROUS ignites, as a replacement to chopping, I'd say ok, otherwise, just no.

As you are not a Nature user, I don't expect you to understand it entirely... but it might be worth looking up the facts before you try and spout something is completely false.

Nature rain is the -only- method to remove firewalls. This may sound minor to some people, but icewalls are -extremely- important to Moondancers who want to pull off Toadcurse. If a Mage casts firewalls, an icewall cannot be cast in that location. However, we are equipped with a means to take them down (nature rain).

Furthermore, nature rain will instantly cure ablaze on -every- person in a room at once. Ablaze was recently fixed and if you do not cure it, you take continual fire damage (there was a bug where it instantly fizzled, this was changed although it does still linger in some attacks). This is quite helpful against Gorgogs too as they have a fire attack that hits the entire room.

If forest fires were implemented, I'd like Nature-users to be the ones most able to start them. Maybe pyromancers can also have a power skill that causes a large enough flame to set an entire area of forest on fire.

If you want to ignite these sapling things individually, whatever. I think it would undo the rebalancing they bring (unless I'm wrong and ignite is a trans skill of some kind that everyone can't get for under 100 gold), but thats a problem for the combatants.

Why would Nature users be the ones most able to start them? Fire brought about civilization, and usually nature people try to prevent forest fires, not start them.

It would take time for saplings and the like to die, but if you're trying to forest urban environment, obviously they'd die quicker.

Fire is destructive after all, and available to anyone with a tinderbox. It could be ignite specific, though. Realitycheck dispels illusions instantly, while it would take time for fire to destroy, leaving time to take care of it, and the offending Geomancer. Besides, they can't do nuts to the demesne until the sapling or tree dies, so they'd be sitting in a potentially active druid demesne until then.

Does anyone with a frost vial really have to worry about being ablaze?

Sometimes forest fires are good for forests

Heh, it would be interesting to see nature people sit back on a wicker chair with a bottle of beer, admire the view of a forest on fire, and go, "Sure we love trees, but once in a while we gotta burn em to keep things going."

But no, forest fires usually mean the destruction of trees, which means disruption of an ecosystem, destruction of animal habitat, potential slaughter of wildlife from flames or asphyxiation from smoke and air and maybe water pollution.

Poor squirrels will lose their homes. How is it good for nature?

Actually, in NATURAL forest fires, trees usually don't burn. You see, that is what bark does, it protects a tree from fire. ONLY if there is an incredible ammount of underbrush do fires get hot enough to actually damage trees. So, its actually enviromentalists that cause fires :-P

In history, there were tribes of indians in Florida who started fires every autumn, if i recall, to purge the dead life and allow for new growth.

Well, the druid saplings should either take 1 chop to kill EVERYWHERE, or have ignite kill em. Illusionary terrain has no exceptions as to if it can be realitychecked instantly, why should druid saplings have an exception? All lumberjacks are equal if all realitycheckers are equal, in my book If you want druid saplings to have that 4 chop exception, you need to balance that with an exception for realitycheck.