Swoop isn't feasible to use for Ebonguard to kill a target. Why? You have to climb up into trees (which Ebonguard cannot make), Perch (which takes balance), and then Swoop. If Swoop hits, it brings the target up into trees... so you only have one real chance to do it.

So while you climb up/perch, your target can yanno... heal and move?

And to bring this back around a bit... during my sparring spree today, I found only three stag abilities useful. Greenman (puncture lung sucks when you don't catch it) Swiftstripes... not much more speed, but a little, and ancestral curse. (Ringwalk to an extent)

None of those are great, unless you can get your target into a room with on exit, have ringwalk and block up.

Compared to how effectice drawdown is (Plus Moonbeam... since Guards don't gwet flow) or how annoying that dog can be in tracking.

I would love stagform to be a little better, but hey, no biggie. I aint changing for simple RP reasons, and there are some skills that have uses here and there. Sacrifice, totems, paints, etc...

Its not bad, and I am sure if the Trans skill was better there would be more Stag Guards.

Annoying to the Tracker, maybe. I have yet to find the good combat skill for hunting companions because I don't have the money to trans all my skills.

Just ask Dinoniel how effective they can be... one spar, his dog was doing everything just right, and just when I writhed off it, it had clamped onto me again....


Needless to say he won because I could not manage to writhe off long enough to hit him.

See, I don't have the money OOC to get that high. I'm barely scrambling as it is.

Moon Warrior

Moondance waning-alright skill, only useable 1v1 really if you have placed a slitlock upon the target

Moondance Dark- found the targettable one decent enough to use against non-trans discipline folk

Moondance drawdown-Sweet skill, 25% damage reduction(roughly, apparently not flat) +10 to weapon stats, mana regen and +1 intel
the defining ability of moon for warriors.

Stag users
Medicine bag-I personally found it real nice even with the arm balance how it is, though I would definately prefer to see warriors be able to use it off arm balance-awesome skill, I used to touch bag for 3200

Stagtotem-AMAZINGLY awesome skill for group fights and/or bashing astral, freakin awesome.

Ancestral curse-Nice against mages and wiccans, fair against others, though not targettable

Swiftstripes-sweet skill +1 level of balance is not easy to come by

Parade-Everyone underestimates this ability, it utterly kicks ass. While in stagform , it's an active lust, hurt by a druid? Just parade for a bit until your back up to speed.

Stagform-Eh i'll agree this one is kinda meh, I suggested sometime back that being in stagform allows you to clot at double efficiency, perhaps an envoy can aim for such again.


Just some of the finer points of two skills. Overall Stag is not a terrible choice for a warrior, I much enjoyed stag the time that I had it, was exceptional for bashing at least.

Best idea? TALK TO YOUR ENVOYS. We are all here almost everyday for several hours, and we usually bring up one skillset or another for discussion, so let Elryn or Flacarealah know what you want and get them to envoy it.

It's always been a flat 20% for every single one of my tests over the past half a year or so, including when I just rechecked it a few minutes ago.

+20% damage resistance is not 20% less damage is the point. If you have a lightning proof (10% resistance to lightning) and drawdown, for instance, and you are struck with 100 lightning damage, you take about 70 (closer to 72, I think). If you had just the lightning proof, you would take exactly 90. 90->70 is 22% reduced damage.

Now, if you had a frost potion injusted and a fire proofing (10% + 10%) and drawdown up, and you took 100 damage, you'd take closer to 60 damage, rather than the 80 you'd take if you just had fire proofing and frost potion. 80->60 is 25% reduced damage.

So, drawdown is pretty much always going to be more than 20% reduced damage, especially against physical and magical harm. It's about 30% against physical and 40% against magical, due to your other physical and magical resistance skills.



Xenthos - yes, I think crowform is also crud for ebonguard. The trick is to add things that help warriors without adding things that help druids, since crowform looks perfectly find for druids. Can you attack people with swords while they're hoisted? Maybe hoist in crowform should strip levitation? Maybe faster balance while in the air, like Fallen thought was already there, is a good addition?

Regarding Stag, I'm not sure Gore is worthwhile even with the ability to rend, but I wouldn't know, since we don't have that abuility. I still think it needs something more. Parade isn't worthwhile for someone using swiftstripes in my eyes due to the eq penalty making parade take less time to use than to cure, right? Especially if Athana's right about it not actually lusting. If +1 dex is negligable of a bonus, perhaps make it +2 dex? That still does nothing for a druid, and perhaps makes it a bit more powerful for a warrior.

Zenji, when I said the faster movement wasn't worthwhile, I meant during a fight. It's great when just traveling, but I don't find it useful when fighting, and I don't find it worth 10p by itself. Stagform is *barely* worth the 10p cost for druids due to the cheaper stagstomp, but it just isn't worthwhile for a warrior to waste 10p on.


Why am I not talking to my envoys? Because I don't know what to talk to them about. Athana has many other things she would rather envoy about right now, things that help make useless Hartstone skills not useless, and I'd rather her envoy those things. I guess I could talk to Flacarealah, but I suppose I wanted to know what actually needed changing in other people's eyes. I'm not terribly experienced with warriors, so I'm not sure what's balanced.


The Medicinebag thing has been there for AGES, and hasn't been fixed. The Goreimpale problems have been there just as long, and have never been fixed. I'm really wondering why

Huh? Let's assume all your numbers are correct:
10% + 20% = 30%
100 * (1 - 0.3) = 70

If you take 72 instead, like you said:
100 * (1 - 0.1) = 90
90 * (1 - 0.2) = 72

You've not given any proof that drawdown is anything other than 20%. Drawdown plus your others defs will protect you more than just Drawdown, which should be obvious. That doesn't mean Drawdown itself is any better.

I just mean the damage reduction over a Serenwilder NOT having drawdown. I'm comparing the damage a stag serenguard takes over the damage a moon serenguard takes. The difference due to Drawdown is more than 20%. What's wrong with that comparison?

Also, my numbers were wrong, it's the average of additive and multiplicative stacking, as far as I've found. So, 71 for the example you cited.

Still, if a Moon Serenguard is taking -50% damage from physical attacks due to fullplate (that's a complete guess, I have no idea what the actual amont is), and -20% more from Drawdown, if he would take 100 damage, he's taking ((100-(.5*100+.2*100))+(100*(.5*.8)))/2 = 35 damage, if I'm right. A Stag Serenguard would take 50. The difference between taking 50 damage and taking 35 damage is 30%.

Make it +1 strength, that is also useless to a Druid... not that this will happen, and quite frankly prolly does not need to happen.

Although, maybe make the Stagform (and Crowform) different for Druids and warriors. For druids, it would remain as is, but for Warriors, maybe lvl 1 balence, that stacks with swiftstripes, +1 strength, and a similar damage bonus (not as much) as Moon/Night get to their weapons? Keep the movement, and useless gore...

Though Gore used Strength? Or am I just mixing things up again?

It probably does... but no half intelligent Guard is going to gore someone knowing they can not do anything afterwards...

As a warrior who has had the Stag skill since the beginning, here is my take on the abilities:

Useful: Staghide, Swiftstripes, Trueheart, Medicinebag (mostly for bashing because of the arm balance thing)

Useless:
Bellow - stun is very short and other attacks, even switching to a shield for Shieldstun, are better

Pacing - it only targets one person and has to be activated to pace each person, whereas Pacing in Achaea is a defense that allows you to pace anyone you follow

Parade - love potion is usually better and it's passive

Bolting - warriors aren't supposed to be cowards, right?

TotemReturn - non-instantaneous, costs power, and doesn't work across planes

Ringwalk - requires multiple Stag followers to use it before you get a decent chance of keeping someone from leaving, which sucks in comparison to things like Carcer or GreaterPentagram or even Rubble and other semi-hindering things


I think Stagform is pretty good, and really the most worthwhile ability in the skill. I like the faster movement during combat and when I'm just wandering about.

I almost never use StagTotem, except during some spars, because of the power cost and that it is a stationary totem which goes away after a minute or two. I could see it's usefulness in group combat, however, so I don't think it's useless.

StagStomp is not terribly useful to a warrior, either. If I want to keep someone down, I'll keep smacking them in the leg or web them or paralyze them. Even using a poison to break legs is more useful than the StagStomp breaking legs. These other attacks have other effects, but all the stomping does is break the legs, and stomping costs power?

I haven't yet had the opportunity to use Sacrifice, mostly because there is almost never a body. Most fighting takes place on the higher planes and a lot of the fighters will conglutinate. The ones that don't conglutinate are often turned to stone, tombstones, frozen, eaten, or whatever, which removes the corpse. Even if I did sacrifice myself to resurrect 30 people whose bodies were all still present and unchanged, they would return confused (Didn't I just die? What's happening?) and without any defenses. The only time I've seen anyone use this Sacrifice ability was when someone was tired or hungry and a person with more health gave up some health to revitalize someone.

The Celestian version of Sacrifice works on souls, if I'm not mistaken, which seems a bit unbalanced to me considering that there are a dozen ways to destroy a corpse and no real way to destroy a soul (though eye sigils -could- be employed to prevent the soul from moving too far, they are obtained from the cities and not very easily most days). So, someone dies and whether or not their corpse still exists, they "walk" their soul back home and find someone to resurrect them.

In my opinion, this should either be balanced or reversed. The communes associate more with the spirit world (Totems) and the cities associate more with the physical world. That's just the way I see it.

Finally, why does Ancestralcurse show up in a room and other things like it do not? How is a curse a tangible/visible thing? I can't glance or squint to see squirrels throwing acorns or jellyfish swimming around.

(Sorry this is so long. Didn't realize I had so much to say...)

EDIT: I hate when I'm tired and start to read the doublepost again before figuring it out. Fixed. ~Shiri~

Some clarifications and questions:

PACE includes follow, so if you always pace when you want to follow someone, it acts just like it does in achaea. #alias follow {pace %1} if you must.


Do you ever use Gore, and is Stagform worth the 10p for the defence every time you die?


StagStomp knocks your foe off eq and requires them to CONCENTRATE to regain it. Therefore, it is amazing in Sap for that reason, not because of the broken legs, which aren't bad, but do not hinder sap curing unless the druid knocks their foe down, which no druidry or stag skill does. Dreamweaving can though.

I don't see it's usefulness for a warrior though.


You completely misunderstand what the skill does. This is the problem with having THREE skills called Sacrifice that all do entirely different things.

The Necromancy one is an instakill.
The Sacraments one resurects a soul at the cost of the caster's life.

The Stag one trueheals a (living) target, curing the target of all afflictions and exhaustion, restoring health, mana, ego, sobriety, balance, and equilibrium. Also wakes the target up and stands the target up. The cost is 2/3rds of the caster's max health, and it can kill the caster if used when the caster is below 2/3rds max health. You can also sacrifice yourself for your allies, doing the listed effects to everyone in the same local area who is on your allies list (including enemies who lusted you), but that version strips vitae, then kills you, then destroys your corpse. It still allows planar conglutination though, but on Prime, it's a forced pray death.

The Stag skill has nothing to do with reviving people at all in any way.





I have a random question - does anyone know if medicinebag stacks with sip bonuses?

That doesn't change the fact that it's still 20% reduced damage, as a flat rate, you can throw any of the numbers you want at it, but it's still 20% in and of it self otherwise you wouldn't be using that .8 in your calculations, which was the point I was trying to clarify for everyone.

Anywho, back on topic, +1str might be interesting.. but would that actually do anything when you take into account bear+flex+whatever else they have? Wouldn't it have to be +2str to matter?

Kinda off topic maybe but had to say some things.


You're right kinda, but its not because tracking is better for warriors. I count about two (active) trackers and two stag users, though neither of the trackers are interested in becoming good fighters. Well can't speak for Everiine I guess(did you buy a helm yet?!). In my opinion the unspecialized totems skillset by itself has more useful combat abilities and defenses than the entire hunting/tracking skillset. Immunity to fear, mana regeneration for surge, cloaked movements, increased strength, etc. vs frail dog, and traps if you have the resources and time to set them up. Tracking is for >non-fighters<. I chose it because I liked the idea of having a wolf companion and I'm keeping it because it's great for doing quests.


Luck . In a real fight just kill the dog. It probably won't take more than 3 combos/hits and it'll save you alot of grief.

Dunno much about moon and stag, though in a group fight I'd prefer to have a stag serenguard around. Just giving a tracker's opinion.

I'm going to completely ignore your absurd assertion that 15 is 20% of 50. If I don't, I think the part of me that wishes I had gone for a math degree instead of CS/HU degrees would break down sobbing.


Tracking is actually a highly useful skillset for group battles. It has buggy demesne summon and it has pit traps.

Why do you consider stag better? The only reason two reasons I can see stag serenguard being nice in a group fight are blocking with trueheart (which resists Beckon), and having someone with a really nice sip (due to medicinebag, weathering, and naturally higher con on warriors races) who can thus sacrifice feasibly midcombat.

I consider buggy demesne summon a better group skill. It doesn't even require a demesne.


EDIT: And as a complete side note, why the heck will your companion regress into a puppy in a couple of years, Dinoniel?

Ecology can knockdown.