if you think that the moondancers are OP, then I don't even want to think about how absurd Shadowdancers are. Offensively they are better in every aspect except for hexing. They hit way harder than us even with our awesome damage formula, they hit much harder than us with a little life leech (though lots don't even consider this, I think it's pretty negligible). they drain mana much better than us. to help prevent escaping they get bonds...stops all magical travel, spores, cubix, ectera. Brumetower stops all seizing and all movement in and out by tree elevations and above. we get shafts which cost 5 power, and changes quickly and randomly, too quickly to actually be of any real use other then getting lucky for one second, but then the next second the path opens up anyways. We also get the dark moon curse...8 power room effect which is actually pretty nice. 5 power targeted affliction curable by focus spirit. I never use this, I think it's worthless. phantoms seems much better to me, less power, hits with damage, not curable.

Now defensively, garb gives the same magic protection as aura, but also gives poison protection. They don't have a mother healing them but they have drink (not a single clue what that does, only idea i have is some sort of defense that passively heals and/or cures afflictions in rooms with shadows) they don't get maiden blessings, but being in bed with Celest that's easily gotten with free benedictions. moondancers get shine...which is broken, somewhat anyways. at it's weakest phase to improve damage it did 5 extra damage to sojiro when I was practicing my burst. didn't check the mid phase and strong phase.

yes and I left out waning cause the waning vs choke argument is old. The only dislike I have for choke (because it's against me) is that it is a ridiculously good skill to defend against avatar and guard raids. All they need to defend against a 15 person raid is one night user that just goes in and drops choke in the room with guards or an avatar. everyone gets aeoned while guards hammer down on people. absurdly good defense utility and it costs 3 power from a person. much better than any of our nexus powers I think like liveforest, surge whatever the serenguards have and whatever the bards don't have.

How anyone can pretend that Moondancers are an overpowered class at all is beyond me. Not only are we strictly inferior to Shadowdancers in most ways, we're not even great outside of that.

There are a couple of ways Moondancers are better than Shadowdancers though, I just can't think of any off the top of my head.

EDIT: We have beam! OH WAIT. That still hasn't been upgraded. Maybe it's a bit better than flight though...? And crone is marginally better than slaugh outside of choke.

ha beam got nerfed remember? Conclave is actually pretty useful. harvest is a utility ability. Shadowdancer fae can actually kill on their own unless Moondancers the only chance of dying to a moondancers fae is when the crone randomly gives masochism.

Shadowdancers get conclave too. I forgot about harvest, that is pretty good. And yes, I did know beam got nerfed. It was supposed to get upgraded in another way to compensate (the only reason it got nerfed is coding restrictions making it impractical to stop shop access any other way) but apparently nothing the envoys suggested got through...:/

Night has conclave too.

EDIT: Evil Shiri-bot ninja...

I have to agree, MDs are far from OP. I do think that wiccan is one of the easier archetypes to fight with; you have to learn which hexes work best in combos, when to use dwhammy and when not to, when aeon is worth the balance loss, and when to start with the lashing. Once you get those things down, most fights will follow the same general progression. I think this makes it easier to be good as an MD than a warrior/druid/guardian/bard. Still, against competent fighters, MDs are average at best.

if i had access to shadowdancers skills I'm afraid I'd turn into one of those people who just log in to grief and when it's over leave.

You say that like you're not one of those people now...

Well played.

Firstly both Tuek and Narsrim have used Moondancer skills to extremely great effects.
Secondly Moonbeam was only changed in that monolith sigils blocked it and nothing else was touch, and it doesn't add to your combat ability.
Thirdly COMBAT skills like Shine was upgraded.

If anything, both Tuek and Narsrim will be far deadlier now with the new skills. You may not claim it to be OP, but in no way is it Under-powered. Stop comparing it to others and see what it can do on its own.

Glumki is a dish involving cabbage.

1. Krellan partly covered that.
2. Yeah, it doesn't add much to our combat ability (against any competent group anyway), though it can still be nice in home territory for escape beams...sometimes. Either way, it's a nice utility effect we have that Shadowdancers don't.
3. Does this even work yet? If so I'll have to test and see if it makes any difference at all.

4. What?? How do you work that out just from the post you made? Also, are you trying to suggest skills do, in fact, exist in a vacuum and shouldn't be compared to others?

Yes, it works-- it was just backwards to the AB for a while.

Yes. Shadowdancers are even more overpowered. To a silly extent. And they always have been, though it has taken a set of good combatants to show them off properly, and that's only really happened quite recently.

Moondancers may not be quite so good, but they're a hell of a lot better than the general level of forum whining might lead the average reader to suppose.

1. Tuek and Narsrim could both be very good as anything, as Narsrim continues proving. That's OOC skill, and doesn't really prove anything about the class skills.

2. Don't forget that flow was nerfed into oblivion first, then moonbeam also was nerfed to keep it from being used to rob storerooms. That leaves MDs (who used to have amazing travel utility) with much, much less.

3. Shine and isn't very useful for combat. Some combat skills were rearranged (i.e. hexes losing allhex, hexaura getting buffed) which I like, but it was a lateral move more than an improvement. MD combat skills have not been upgraded; they have stayed about the same, while (as Krellan said) curing - especially aeon - has vastly improved. Lusternia is starting to experience the 'curing creep' that happened in Imperian with IMTS. I personally like it; it means we have to be better on offense and makes combat more strategic. Regardless, I'd argue that it's harder to be good as anything than it was when Lusty was new, especially as a class which relies on a specific affliction to be good.

MDs are not OP, but they're also not UP. They are right about where they should be. SDs need a few nerfings to bring them back to the right level.

Orly?

Narsrim is -not- a scary bard. Not at all in my experience. It will be interesting to see how long he stays one.

You can only be as good as the skills you have to work with.

You are curing manually.
Do you know what would happen if a warrior tried to manual through life?

Aeoncuring is like always, you just have to think while using it, and not just aeon on the next three equis.
Shine IS useful in combat. It is still bugged as far as I can see (Didn't see the message for extradamage yesterday during full moon, but maybe you need to be outside for it to work)
I don't personally know how much resistance garb gives. Might be it's less than Moonaura.
Lifeleech on Nightkiss is not even worth mentioning.
Moon has resurgem. (<<< Beats any argument that Shadowdancers are way more op than Moonies. They get more offense, but if they screw up, they pray on prime.)
And Wiccans got spores. How much more movement do you want? O.o

1. Aeon curing is done in the same way it always was, but people now are actually learning how to do it properly. When people learn to deal properly with a skill, it ecomes much less powerful. Choke is a perfect example - if Seren knew how to deal with choke, Glomdoring would not be able to do nearly as much damage to them.

2. If it's bugged, how useful can it really be? From what I have seen, it doesn't make a noticeable difference. Even if it did, MDs are rarely if ever going to kill anybody with damage, so shine won't really do much for them. The bonus defense would be okay, but I wouldn't bother using it.

3. If I remember correctly, Garb gives 15-20%, and is the same as aura + poison def

4. Resurgem is very handy, but it again isn't useful at all in combat. It's not overpowering in any way, it just saves them from losing exp. I think SDs should have something to help them out in the same way (if the egg ever gets fixed...)

5. Spores are very nice for escaping, but they can't be used for spur-of-the-moment travel. You can use them if you plan well in advance where you will want to go, but they're useless during defense/raids, where flow used to be amazing, and moonbeam is 'meh.'

This is true to an extent. Nobody will be incredible as a bard. There are still certain people that have enough OOC skill to make normal classes seem OP, or slightly UP classes seem normal. Look at Thoros and the Nihilists, for example. There aren't many people who would have said Nihilists were OP a few weeks ago, but since he came back and started killing everyone I've heard people complain about their OP skills more than once.

1. Dude, you cured aeon a year ago like you do today. They didn't even get so many afflictions added that would make curing any harder, or would require a lot of work on your aeon-queue. Choke, it's a permanent aeon, so you are better off just curing manually. You won't do that any more effective in a year than you will do it now, if you got the cures memorized.

2. Additional damage and damage reduction is ALWAYS good. It will require less sipping of health, so you can apply more for wounds, you will not have to sip health that much when getting attacked by a druid, helping you to keep mana up, etc. Additional damage is also always nice. And I said I am not sure if it is bugged, might be it only works outdoors.

3. Where did you get those numbers from?

4. Not losing XP itself helps in combat. Less lost exp -> higher level -> more health/mana/ego, etc.

5. Flow is still awesome in defense and raids, I don't see how it can be made better without making it worldwide or something. Moonbeam, can you still move while moonbeaming? No clue on that.

I'm pretty sure it's still messed and doesn't work. I'll try this again though to be sure (I want to know the range of it too).


The problem with Moondancers is that you need to fit into a certain pattern to have any chance at all at 1 vs 1 combat:

(1) Out of the three spec choices wiccans get (healing, astrology and hexes) ONLY hexes is viable in combat. Astrology is just too terrible random, and healing.. well it has bedevil which doesn't seem very good (last time I actively heard about it being used in combat though was when Ethelon was a Celestine.. so maybe it changed since then but I somewhat doubt it)

(2) Only race that works well for Moondancers is Mugwump. Anything else and your offence will suffer greatly.



Thing is, shine is purely defensive and random. It might give you dmg reduction, or increase your moonburst dmg but it's not something you can actively use in combat.

And not sure how much it does either. It might be 1% for all I know, it's never worked for me at all so far.