That was with all my possible cold/fire protection up at both times. I'm taking about the same damage I had always did with a heat staff, so yeah. It doesn't seem to have changed much really for me.

Thats still pretty sucky from a merian. You're aslaran, arent you meant to take slightly more against heat damage?

I had 5490 max health, frost/fire sipped, faeling, and fitness. No resist enchantments.

I have level 2 fire weakness, but that's compensated by: fire cloak, Athletic Fitness, frost defense, and drawdown.

ANNOUNCE NEWS #390
Date: 9/12/2005 at 0:17
From: Roark Libertas
To : Everyone
Subj: Wounds

The WOUNDS command has undergone a couple changes. First off, it was
displaying things wrong. It did not take in consideration the wound
stage from no wounds to below level 1 wounding stage (which I have now
dubbed "trifling"). Thus WOUNDS was showing all the wounds a level off.
So instead of going from none -> trifling -> negligible -> light ->
medium -> high -> critical, it did none -> negligible -> light... This
cosmetic bug is fixed. No changes were actually done to combat wounding
itself so it should have no impact on combat other than the visual
feedback you get.

The second change was to what it displays. The percentage display has
been very confusing in many instances to players and envoys since at
critical level you can keep taking wound damage, yet since there is no
level above critical it would simply say "0%". Now it will give you your
raw wound score for the current wounding level. The total wounding score
it takes to get to the next level rises with each level, and after
critical it pretty much goes up forever. This is how it always has been
"under the hood", so again it does not impact combat; it just changes
what you see. It also may make it easier to judge the power of wounding
damage since 1% of wounding at a low level is not the same as 1%
wounding at a high level, but 1 raw point at a low level is the same as
1 raw point at a high level. I also made the colors reflect yor wound
level rather than percent to the next wound level.

Penned by my hand on the 18th of Roarkian, in the year 126 CE.

That wounding stuff is going to affect how people heal, I don't know what Roark is talking about.

Ooh, now I'm Aqua resistant.

I agree with all your points about the new staff damage.

I'm guessing the funky healspring was preparation for the new wounds, as after the change, it wasn't wounding me any more. Still worried about the staff damage though. The only good thing about it is that we no longer have to compensate for only doing 40% of the normal attack under water. I'm a little worried because the decent staff damage was one of the best things about fighting as an aquamancer.

You still get twirl.

God, I hate twirl.

Me, too. He kept twirling and screaming "Ahh!"

I can't figure out how to fix that! You were hitting pretty hard, and I'm just a fragile little merian. You'd scream too

Aquamancers have it good. Twirl is awesome, and your staff is still miles above cudgel.

-keeps fingers crossed waiting for druid envoy changes-

That's one of the things about Geb that I think is funny.. He screams "Ahh!" when he gets attacked.

Twirl pwns..

Druids have zero room to talk now with ecology.

There is a certain thing called synergy. A synergy between skills is most desired. Druids do have it, even if most do not seem to notice it. Example: A smart druid can force a warrior to consider whether it is a good idea to surge or not. By stacking bleeds and using abilities that force the warrior to use up his mana, you can force a surged warrior to run out of the mana needed to maintain surge or to focus out of paralysis.

Aquamancers lack any sort of synergy that would help them overcome a powerful warrior’s surged health. A warrior who walks into an aquamancer demesne will always surge if he has it. He does not have to worry over his mana, because aquamancers do not have the means of stacking afflictions and conditions that would cause massive mana drain. Nor, can an Aquamancer rely on his demesne to pick up the damage slack, because quite frankly the damage sucks. (I know druid demesnes do not do a lot of damage, but a smart druid can augment the damage and bleeding by giving his target sensitivity and by the use of smudges.)

Aquamancers can set up their demesne to be pretty good defensively, but a strong defense usually ends up in a stalemate at best. I just hope some other adjustments are made that will give aquamancers another option when dealing with people very resistant to damage. (Viable non-cheap option, is what I mean.)

But Narsrim, haven't you learned yet? Druids will always be underpowered... until they get tactical nukes.

He doesn't do it all the time though... at least, Acrune didn't. He didn't start until I got him pinned and started severing tendons.

So the "Ahh!" did sort of fit... it was just amusing as heck to see this merian screaming and twirling like crazy every time I swung.

Narsrim, not every single Druid is going ecology. I'm sure plenty still have runes and dreamweaving...

Actually, no, you're right. Damn it.