Ecology decimates groups?! How!? You can just gust away smudges and I can't think of any other abilities in it that are too good in group situations..boulderblast & hailstorm still win

I hate to agree with Narsrim.. but you people are seriously unimaginative.

If they are going to be used against a group, then clearly that means you have a group too.

"I'd rather bellow whore!"

Ok, you do that, and let someone else light the smudge. Wow, cooperation? Who'da thunk it?

Whatever though, i'm sure it sucks just like you guys say. I mean, clearly, because it can be prevented at all means that it sucks. Nevermind if you can prevent the prevention.

Ok, telepathy does not suck to any degree. I find it hilarius that only non-Ecologists think ecology is a OMGWTF Pwnage skill.

Yaay for a psionic nerf! Now lets fix ecology.

I meant Tertiary, sorry, but honestly, to me, there are only primary skills Moon/Wicca which you don't pick, and secondary skills which you pick Healing/Hexes/Astrology Unless I'm missing something the only Tertiary skillsets with instakills are dreamweaving, (tarot?) and the two psionics skillchoices. Where as, a little more then half of the primary skillsets have them, some even more then one.


Simple, don't try to kill every seren guard you see. Also, what the heck does you not having transmigrate have anything to do with the fact that they improved healing scrolls, which you feel is a nerf to psionics alone.


Telekinetics/telepaths have room attacks in their primary skills, they don't need more damage causing no-power room attacks elsewhere.

QFT

I think that once people realize that an imagination is very helpful for IRE combat, they will complain less about the abilities they posses. A realization that one tactic is not going to be the key to victory in every circumstance will probably be the catalyst that causes them to be a bit creative with their abilities.

I did not make that statement above to say that everything is fine, so please do not get that impression from it. I did make the statement to point out that an ability is not fubared just because it has limitations and can be countered.

... how is it that a TRILL WARRIOR can manage astral and gorgogs? Without surge, I might add.
Just don't expect OMGWTFBBQ doom hwheee. But then, neither should anybody.
Skill ftw.

just answer yourself this question. How would you hunt if you were an Aquamancer with just Trans Aquamancy?

as a warrior you:
*swing hammer*
*swing hammer*
*swing hammer*
*swing hammer*
*fly*
*heal*
*swing hammer*
*swing hammer*
*swing hammer*
*swing hammer*
*fly*
*heal*
... and so on

as a trans aquamancer, you:
*staff cast*
*staff cast*
*fly*
*heal*
*staff cast*
*creature dies*

no matter what, you will hunt better as an aquamancer than a Warrior. Not only you kill faster, but you do more damage and you don't miss

most of the complaints about how healing scrolls have been powered up are by people who think this has actually caused a nerf to mindblast which isnt actually true, still i do not keep up with all the damage if i sip read a scroll and eat sparkles and thats including my regeneration in health mana and ego, plus you are not thinking that if you mindblast even if they do keep up they have lost balance on all forms of healing so any other attacks they cannot cure. for exalmple geo demense? ive been hit by roughly 1000 - 2000 passive damage by different geos demenses and after using everything to cure mindblast how am i meant to cure that? your also forgetting that your demense can stun as well as a number of other things, its not like i can just bash out a macro and all will be healed now that we have had an upgrade to scrolls, revan you mainly seem to be complaining that now you cant just mindblast a few times and kill even good fighters without trying out of your demense as far as im concerened if that is the problem it is right as that is how it should be

just another thing, ive already heard alot about how it has made mages useless because they cant fight out of there demense and i would like to point out something. You get your demense skills in your first main skillset warriors get all of tehre afflictions in there first main skillset so if i take your point of view sacraments and athletics need to have massive upgrades because a warrior should be able to kill without a specialization and only master knighthood! the fact that we would then be able to use both together is irrelavent

This is given. Of course, in group fights, you have to work as a group also. Its just that your choice of word is not so good. Decimate is a very strong word. It is good really. It helps, specially at stacking bleeding, but it wont "decimate". You could have said "Smudges can be very helpful/effective in group fights", then we would agree.

On a side note, I think Rad rune screws group fights better than smudges. It helps in disorienting and keeping other targets off bay for a moment while your party concentrates on a single target.

Decimates is a strong word because smudges are pretty damn strong.

"They can gust!" So? If you have people bellowing and vining, this shouldn't be a problem. Not to mention, if you have some good fighters, said fighters are going to have the attention of the main group, and its likely that you can slip one by. If you don't, then a decent fighter just wasted equilibrium and maybe a charge on gusting. (as i'm assuming they're decent to have caught the smudge and known how to get rid of it)

"They can climb trees!" Oh, even better. Please, please willingly climb trees against a druid. I'm begging you. Sap is your friend. Not to mention that most city dwellers can't climb trees unless their trackers or have put a lot of lessons into Environment, which is rare.

"They can walk out!" This will split the group up. So yay. If you have briars up, it will further hinder those that walked away, giving you more time to kill the ones who were left behind. Where's the problem?

Smudges may not be the end all to combat, but in just about any sgroup cenario, you benefit from firing them off compared to not. Especially if they fire, which they will in said group combat situation.

Technically decimate isn't a strong word in this circumstance, and it's origins from times in the past and places were real battles were fought. You would kill 1/10th of your enemy, destroy 1/10th of a town, you would decimate them.

If you decimate zenji you've done 320 damage to him, which he can sip back up.

…but I’m just being nit picky, this thread is completely useless anyway so it's no harm, nothing’s been nerfed, healing scrolls just got improved.

Just some food for thought:

- Revan is correct that it is easier to staff someone to death than to mindblast. In deluge, my staff (which is the champion staff) does almost double the same of mindblast against most targets at 4.0 seconds. If we look at this over a period of 60 seconds, I can staff 15 total times whereas I could mindblast 10 times. Damage wise, I would accumulate 3x more damage with staff than I would mindblast.

- The term masked afflictions, used by Elryn and others in this thread, is misleading. Telepathy messages are generalized. There are only 5 needed cures (focus body, kombu, pennyroyal, wormwood, horehound). On any given message, you can see if you were paralysed because you will have "p" on your prompt. Stupidity, Dementia, Hallucinations, Epilepsy, Recklessness, Phobias, etc. have secondary messages.

Anyone with a decent system does not read telepathy as "hidden afflictions." They focus body if they have a "p" on prompt, eat kombu, and then eat pennyroyal if kombu ddn't heal anything, cure recklessness of prompt, etc.

If you cannot heal 2 afflictions in 4.0 seconds with such easy generalized messages, you suck and likely would die to a any decent combatant quickly. Very quickly.

- Ecology, while not as offensive as Telepathy, gives YOU TOTAL IMMUNITY TO DEATH. I'm sorry but no one with a skill like that can ever complain.



Gust delays smudges (by a relatively insignifcant amount of time if you are constantly smudging), it doesn't remove them. Learn your abilities.

The term total immunity to death used by narsrim and others in this thread, is misleading. You still die, you just get temporary immunity to xp loss upon death.

Death in Lusternia has no other consequence than experience loss, which is totally nullified by transmigrate, which means you are immune to it.

I'd have to dissagree there is power loss as well, and you're cleared out of the area you died in. Why do people defend? They defend so the raiders die and revert to elsewhere.

Death in Lusternia means you lose defenses, which is was the result of my frustration more often than losing experience. Especially when the defenses cost a crapload of power to set up. Transmigrate means you don't lose much XP, but way more power.

Death costs time, power, and exp. Transmigration trades the exp cost for a greatly increased power cost. Also, it is at times faster, if you don't conglutinate or get rezzed. Saying we're "immune to death" is simply retarded.

There are many, many, many times I'd rather take the exp hit than the massive power cost to transmigrate and redef. It's nice sometimes, and it's very nice that it's far faster than praying, but if I had conglutinate I probably wouldn't use it much.

Secondly, we can complain all we want. If the rest of a skill sucks, except for one ability, you nerf that ability if need be and buff the rest, you don't just let it go and use that one ability as an excuse for why the whole set is overpowered.

Also, what you're saying about masked afflictions can be applied to anything. Hexes aren't really masked in most cases, since only about 6 or 7 are ever used. If you get blackout, you got hit with vapors. Trying to stand will tell you if you're paralysed. Reckless is easy to catch. What you're saying is that if you make no mistakes, masked afflictions aren't that hard to figure out, which is true. However, saying they are not masked is silly. Runes is not masked. Fetish hits are not masked. Telepathy is masked, whammied hexes are masked, angels are semi-masked (since they give more than one general message, unlike telepathy).

Telepathy afflictions are masked but given at a slow rate. Hexes can be masked too, but the rate they can be given (with a bit of preparation) is superior to Telepathy's rate. The afflictions that the Hex skill-set possesses are also better than Telepathy's list. So it is a bit easier to detect and heal Telepathy afflictions before the Telepath layers on more, than it is to do the same for hidden Hex afflictions.

It can be said that most good systems have some general means of detecting the most dangerous afflictions when given via hidden methods. Though archetypes with the Hex skill-set do have supporting abilities that can significantly hinder or delay those hidden affliction detection abilities, while a Telepath is not as capable of doing the same.

Aqua demesne hinders curing far more than Wiccan fae.

You are not thinking outside of the fae. Wiccans have more abilities than 'order entourage kill @target'.