Well druids have sap which more than makes up for anything mages have except heartburst which everyone agees is a bit dodgy anyway, I personally always found your average druids demense on its own to be worse than any average mages. Although mages demenses do seem to scale more with titans and artifacts so your fully artifacted mage demense beats a druids anyday.

A druid demesne on its own is lucky if it even hinders you, let alone actually manage to be dangerous. A good portion of the effects only hit in the trees. Geomancer demesnes, at least, are MUCH scarier.

I agree with Ferlas. I actually find fighting druids much harder, since in a druid's demesne Sap plus Stagstomp basically means game over. It just requires timing your demesne correctly, which isn't hard at all.

Druids have sap. That makes up for EVERYTHING.

After testing with Revan yesterday, I have to say that as a

Level 87 faeling with 5.6k ego and forcefield up, with level 2 sip,

I CAN tank Mindblast out of a demesne. As soon as a demesne or afflictions factor in, I easily go down.
I dunno, if THAT's the requirement for fighting Mindblast, I'd rather run from it, sorry.

I still say that Psionics should be beefed up, at the cost that, when you have Psionic Channels activated, your demesne cuts out. I mean, for something so huge, it makes sense that a Mage would need his full concentration.

It would prevent the icky uber-power of Psionics + Demesne, while allowing Mages to choose if they want to fight with a demesne or without. It would be every mages dream to have that choice, and it would be a whole lot easier to balance as well.

And then aquamancy/geomancy would become worthless and psionics would be their 'main' skillset.

It pretty much is already, at least for Telekinetics.

Actually I rarely use telekinetics in fighting....I use the defensive measures, so I can't do any offense besides my staff, phantoms and my demesne.

Considering the logs I've seen of daggers pwning people, and how overkill we all know Heartburst is... I can't figure out why you'd do that, lol.

Sylphas - druid demesnes are a lot better than mage ones. Put me in a fight with virtually any aqua or geomancer and they wouldn't be able to kill me. Geb (definitely not Shamarah) is about the only aquamancer I can think of off the top of my head with an overly decent chance of actually getting me down, while I will get my ass kicked six ways to Sunday if the druid I am fighting actually has a clue about what to do. Geo's are pretty much in the same boat as the aquas - there are very few there that would actually have much chance of killing me.

I like doing things with style.

I'll admit that with Sap, a good druid can kick ass. But comparing just the demesnes, Mages get the better deal.

That is just a silly comparison sylphas, if you're fighting a mage/druid in demesne then sap is a BIG BIG issue. You have to always be on the lookout for it, and when it hits you really have to be on top of it to have any chance of escaping.

Sap is the only skill that matters in Druid combat. It is phenomenally powerful, and the only strategy you ever need (or should contemplate) is getting a saplock.

Our demesne is useful primarily in holding a saplock - without it, it pales in comparison to a geomancer demesne. Our damage is only significant when a saplock prevents healing. Our focus on bleeding is only dangerous when the victim has a saplock hindering their curing.

Dreamweavers that can stick sap are godly. Runists and ecologists that can stick sap aren't far off.

In a way, sap is the new lich. Why should the rest of a druid's skills be mediocre? Because they have sap!

Lich is more defensive in the way that its main function is to prevent xp loss. I don't really care much about making people lose xp so I don't mind lich at all. Sap, on the other hand, is a near-guaranted kill with almost no chance of escape.

yeh, sap at the moment is just too powerful to warrant druids any more offensive upgrades in my opinion.

If sap was toned down...IE you can cleanse while prone, then you could ask for some more afflictions and some other boosts, but currently it might be annoying but the fact that it's -possible- to sap and hold them down indefinitley means you can't be balanced and get more offensive boosts.

Obviously. While sap isn't really -quite- as bad as some are making out, a saplock is certainly one of the top five endmoves.

Unfortunately, you surely understand that it is a delicate situation. No matter how much complaining might spontaneously arise about it (it has actually always posed the same problem in druid combat), it's not going to change until there are other viable strategies for a druid in place.

You can suggest downgrades to sap until the cows come home, it's very easy and I know both of us Druid envoys have no problem in coming up with alternatives for how sap can be made less powerful. That's probably not going to help.

In my opinion, if you don't like fighting against sap the best way to work towards a change is to suggest how our other tactics could be made viable against high-level combatants without using sap as it is now.

I've heard very few ideas that haven't come from Xavius or myself, and I sure as hell won't envoy any downgrade to our key skill until I am sure it won't screw over the class completely.

They seem ok to me. I mean they are not going all OP but they are at least doing something noticable. But alas that is my thought