Which has nothing to do with balancing the skillset.

1. Well, I guess, but it's not a -necessary- upgrade. Really, I'd rather just have a telescope artifact or skill or something so you could stargaze anywhere. Lengthening the durations is necessary.

2. Hmm, 0.2 seconds is still better than nothing, but I suppose you have a point. I hope you envoyed that. Bumblebee seems fine though.

3. Well, that's not really a problem with the skills. Just avoid using the hi-power ones, I guess. (And I get 30% a month, but it's easy enough to just go fetch essence from the elements when I need more.)

From someone who wanted to remain anonymous..
Problems with Lusternia as I perceive them:

1 - Some form of summons are ridiculously overpowered. Demesne summon and wisp allow people to be summoned instantly and -usually- unavoidably. It's stupidly easy to just set up a "geo/aquacast summon (*)" trigger whenever anybody enters a demesne, and summon them into a huge group/locked room/guards/statue/whatever, which simultaneously makes raiding when a Mage is about more or less useless. (Similar thing with wisp, and being wisped into closed rooms with guards/flamed mono's/statues.) My recommendation for fixing this: increase the overall effectiveness of summoning resistance, and let both wisp and demesne summon be blocked by mono's. They're powerful enough.

2 - Buffs are stupid. TF's are far too easy to get. I saw Kaervas walking around with two TF's, before - instantly that's 2+ to all stats, 4+ to con. Factor in the 20% bonus from Tosha blessing, the +2 int from knowledge blessing, the 10% damage bonus from War blessing... it's just way too easy to gain high stats. My recommendation for fixing this: downgrade all manner of bonuses (e.g. reduce knowledge blessing to 1, make Tosha only 10%. War blessing is probably fine as it is). Have TF's just give a +1 to all stats (so remove one of the con bonuses) and have that bonus not be cumulative with other TF's (e.g. even if you have five TF's at one time, you only get +1 to each stat).

3 - Demesnes are powerful, and definitely a strong deciding factor in group combat, and I wish this wasn't the case. A Mage with only a single trans skill (Geo/Aquamancy or Druidry, of course) can adversely affect other people extremely easily and with limited risk to himself (i.e. he can set up a demesne where it's needed ahead of time, and sit behind guards/a large team/just stay in his home city to avoid any kind of reciprocation, while still being able to attack people). The same can't be said of Guardians, who usually need to Trans at least two skills to be effective at combat, or Warriors, whose most important buffs tend to be in Athletics and their tertiary skillset. My recommendation for fixing this: as Torak said, demesne's wouldn't become any less viable in single combat if they worked like vibes and followed the Mage around. At the same time, however, it'd drastically reduce the effectiveness of demesne's in group combat

1. That's totally inaccurate. Wisp has a 3 second delay. That's not an instant at all. I raid Glomdoring -all- the time against people who are trying to wisp me. It just never happens because I'm on my toes, focused, and on the move. If you want to remove the delay and add a monolith requirement (which is how it was) that's fine; however, a 3 second delay + monolith blocking would essentially make wisp 110% worthless. Furthermore, summon resistance is a huge factor already for wisp. It takes about 9 seconds to wisp, find out if the target resisted, resummon wisp, wisp again. That's nothing like demesne summon where you can instant resummon 3-4 seconds after it fails.

2. If buffs are so easily to get why don't you have 2 TFs? Let's be honest, the concern here is primarily that some buffs (like TFs) are easy to get for people who bash, but not easy to get for people who don't. The problem here is that in Lusternia combatants who bash >>>>>>> combatants who don't bash, which was really never as extreme in other IRE games.

However with that said, I think it is important to bear in mind that the average lobstrosity now is worth 2k essence. A TF is 100k essence... so 50 lobs is a TF. That's not expensive enough. TFs need moved up to like 400-600k essence.

Another thing to note is that high stats in Lusternia can't be compared to high stats in other IRE games. It wasn't feasible for anyone to get 18 intelligence in Aetolia without extreme offerings for favors. We have races who default with that sort of intelligence.

3. Hunting can definately influence group fighting too. This is ignored because it isn't as common as mages/druids, but is no doubt there. If you walk/beckoned into a room with an enemy party and fall into a snake pit... you are screwed. Game over (unless they are very inept).

The only problem with wisp is that it still succeeds even if the forest is removed after the wisp begins. This makes it incredibly difficult to break a Druid demesne if the Druid is prepared. The recent raid on Nil was a good example of this. Once Munsia and Narsrim smartened up and stopped wisping the first person to enter the demesne, and rather focused on people chopping/breaking, it was nigh-impossible to break a room without someone dying. If the forest is broken, the wisp should fail.

Likewise, a timer should be added to demesne summon. The way it is now, with instant summoning, it just silly. It removes all skill from the equation, since it cannot be avoided except by resistance. The person with the faster link will win.

Not to mention wisp working on ghosts is a dumb bug.

As stated earlier but I'll recap: It is In Narsrim's envoy report that once terrain changes, wisp will fail even if in progress.

And thanks, it was my idea to remove all you demesne spammers from her list and only focus on Veonira

Did you message me or Shayle? I'm going to guess no.

That's an issue. Part of my job as envoy is to report bugs (in fact, the bulk of my envoy report is just that). This is something you should send me a msg in-game so I can add to my report to fix.

No envoy (or atleast anyone wanting to keep their position) is supposed to refuse something as cut-and-dry as this. However, the person to contact is the envoy who possesses the ability.

I bugged it. If it remains much longer I'll message you IG as well.

And you're welcome for the demesne watch clutter.

One thing I would really like to see is a way to Really get back at someone who kills you. By this I mean, if you have suspect on someone, and you want to get back at them by killing them, and let's say you do manage to kill them, then they get suspect on you. Clearly this is an unfair system. If I'm trying to get back at someone who killed me, it's only fair that I can kill them without risking karmic retribution or anything like that.

So, what I'm trying to say is: If you have suspect on someone, you shouldn't have to declare to attack them (I think that would work), so they wouldn't get suspect on you if you kill them. This way, retribution for a death can be achieved in a fair way that isn't detrimental to the retributioner. That's what I'd like to see.

Why dosnt the power cost have something to do with balancing the skill set? 10 power is a lot for a single buff with a time limit no matter how much power you are able to draw on per day, 10 power is a lot for nightkiss or drawndown but its worth it becaues it will last forever but 10 power buffs that will fade in an hour or so just really are not worth it.

Because power is in huge supply. Power restrictions are imposed by players and as such, not truly a factor.

I don't think this is an unfair system. Maybe they killed you initially for a good reason. You get suspect on them to prevent a painful double kill.

If at a later date you kill them for killing you (again, a relatively good reason), they get suspect on you to prevent a painful double kill.

If at a later date they kill you for killing them (and you see how good reasons lead to endless bloodshed), you get suspect on them to prevent a painful double kill.

It works, and its pretty darn fair. It always gives control of the situation to the most recent victim, preventing excessive harm.

The point of Astrology is that you have some subset of your skills at any given time. Weak magnitudes determine what is worthless, positive effects when you want negative effects and vice versa determines what you can use on your allies and what you can use on your enemies. Prohibitive costs determine what you can use a lot and what you need to ration. It's an interesting balance.

The solution to your power 'troubles?' Don't cast skills with high power costs (or potential costs because of Papaxi) unless you REALLY need them. This isn't an 'issue' with the skill balance, in my opinion. If the cost was a fixed 10 power for a minor buff, then yes, it would be a factor. The cost isn't fixed though, so this is not the situation.

If you want skills that always have the same cost and effect, don't be an astrologer. It's really that simple.