Why did you rank Blacktalon and especially Hartstone that high? And I'm assuming that mages / druids in general are considered by their abilities inside their demesne, because seem druids quite sad outside.

blacktalon actually can go that high. dark rebirth gives extra afflictions if hit. also sap works way better with a bt demesne than hartstone because if you hit it right before demesne effects hit or before they cure the blindness they have to rift out faeleaf then cure blindness or health to head then cure sap and that's assuming you haven't stripped protection yet or they put it back up and paralyse didn't hit. gets even worse with imbedded narcolepsy.

I think that's pretty spot on.

Because of sap.

And yes, they're all obviously considered with their demesne. If they weren't, Hartstone would likely be chillin' with the Harbingers.

How does sap kill though? I mean... cudgel them do death.. how?

Bleeding CAN stack up. It takes friggin long, but it can.
Generally, Hartstone has the better active skills in Stag. Stagstomp > Eyepeck, for sapkill prolly Gore > sweep. Parade depends, really. If you remember that spit has limited uses, it prolly evens out. Spirittotem > Crowtotem. Medicinebag and Regurgitate would be on par, but you can use Medicinebag to cure wounds as well. Ancestralcurse has no equivalent in crow. Headbut equals Squall, I guess. Or is slightly worse, since it only hits one. Bolting is probably on par with decoy, both have different uses.

If you actually compare the skills, Aquas in general do come out on top. They share telepathy/illusions, so the difference is in geomancy/aquamancy. Rubble is probably a little better than deluge, but whirlpool/currents are amazing in group fights. One-on-one, needlerain leads up nicely toward preserve. Really, though, geomancer demesne would come out on top offensively. Still, in a real fight, experience has shown us that the passive curing of aqua demesne makes it much more powerful. When combined with the higher damage from aqua staves (and yes, all of the competent Aqua fighters I know are imperial merian), they can make up for the lack of demesne damage.

Overall, I think this is a pretty nice list. I don't know much about the warrior specs, but from the other classes I do know about, it looks pretty good.

Pinleg owns me. I've seen logs and logs and I'll post more and more logs, I writhe and never seem to get out of pinleg.

Either I'm bugged. . .

And for anyone's reference, any Hartstone/Blacktalon that has trouble killing -anybody- can bugger off and not even try to get good at combat.

Hartstone and Blacktalon are two of the finest classes in Lusternia.

Dunno if I agree with the assessment of Hartstone either... I *needed* luck to kill anyone with half-descent sap curing. There were some people that, no matter what I did, I couldn't get through their sap curing. In 1v1, Thornrend is a joke, unless you can break their writhe system with illusions as a dreamweaver.

And Hartstone vs Celestine/Paladin = loss. Trueheal makes a sap kill impossible.

Meh, maybe I just wasn't as good at combat as the people beating me with their bought systems.

Hm, you should actually have been able to put in stagstomp if you timed sap with your demesne. Paralysis alone leads to...hmm...at least 3 seconds delay, without factoring in lag or other stuff like being vined/being blackouted before the demesne hit. Sap is a reaaaally nice skill, and usually a deathtrap if it is all in perfect timing.

Let me say it like that, the sapcuring from my old system was like, the only REAL good thing I ever coded. If it was off by only one second, I'd usually get out. On the other side, if for example Pentu timed the sap right with the demesne hitting, she usually was able to vine me again right while the "The sticky sap blablah" for rubbing cleanse went in, and then it was basically just a matter of being able to spam tumble to get out if I could. With embedded impatience hitting together with paralysis, I imagine saplocks to be nigh unescapeable. Only thing that Hartstone lack that Blacktalon has is blacklung from crow (and probably the cold from spiders, but that can be shrugged). If you are unlucky and Blacklung hits right before you can cleanse, you can consider yourself screwed. Vining 'till the demesne hit another one or two times, then cudgeling two times, then vining again should be enough to kill people.

I wouldn't put a Night/Axelord so low on the totem pole, since in choke one of their hits can give 3 afflictions if done correctly.

Also, I think the rankings should include more specializations.

Not going to comment on the rest since I really didn't have overly much to do with druids yet.. but sweep does a shitload of damage and gore is a joke. Theoretically you can truecaw them a bit, then knock them out of trees and swoop once, insta kill dead. Gore on the other hand.. by th time they're ready to be insta killed wih it you can probably just put in another cudgle to finish it.

Main reason why I think swoop >> gore: Swoop does a lot of mana damage -and- enough health damage so it cannot be ignored either way. Gore is health only damage if I remember correctly, and shrugable with rune of absorption to make it less than negliable.

Stagstomp isn't the "I win" button some proclaim it to be. Concentrate doesn't take all that long to do, and broken legs don't hinder sap curing unless you get proned. The only way to prone someone as a Hartstone dreamweaver is to put them to sleep, and runists have no way to prone at all. The only time stagstomp is amazing in sap is when you get them confused as well, and if you time sap with your meld, you only have a 1/3rd chance of them being confused, and using stagstomp requires them to not have cured sap before you recover eq.

Someone with trans discipline can cure paralysis in one second, so 2ish seconds to cure it adding in lag, not 3. Assuming they aren't using love potion (which I don't see why they wouldn't) or that it doesn't hit, meld+sap alone = 2s until they can cure the sap, and 4s before I can do anything about them curing the sap. I certainly have to mess them up more than that to prevent it. Motes can't be timed, nor can runes, unless there's something I never figured out, and none of the dreamweaving emotes fire instantly anyway. Narcolepsy is the best I can hit them with, and that fires a random time after it is cast.

So, if I'm very lucky and narcolepsy puts them to sleep in the two second gap between meld hit + sap and them curing the sap, then I can win. Otherwise, I can't. At least, against highly skilled opponents. For the aforementioned scenario to work, narcolepsy has to hit before the meld+sap goes off, but they need to not cure it immediately. I have no idea how to do that against someone who can cure well.

I find hitting someone with five deepsleeps and getting lucky with an exhaustion hit at the same time as meld+sap worked well, but again, took luck, and 20 power (15 for the deepsleeps and 5 for sap). 20 power means 100 seconds, which is quite a very long time, giving them plenty of chances to run away and sleep a bit. Also, if they have trueheal or dreamweave control, I can't do it at all, as both skills grant complete immunity to deepsleep.


Against low and mid teir opponents, sap is an "I win" button, but against the top teir? I just couldn't ever win, or even get anywhere, without sheer luck on my side.

Gore does have a single use - Impale + sap = death. Since the bleed from druids is laughable to anyone the slightest bit tanky, if I had someone in a saplock, I would cudel/maintain saplock the victim while discerning them constantly, and when they hit half health, gore for the impale to prevent them ever having a chance of curing sap. Unless they can trueheal, since you can both trueheal while saplocked and while impaled, curing both no matter what.

Gore did 500 damage to a greatrobes wearing target for 2p, as a note. The damage is indeed laughable.

...swoop does around 1k damage to health and mana to me. That's not a shitload. If they kick you down from the tree, they also leave you out of sight for a few seconds without being able to see if/what you cure. With levitation up, you won't get any broken bones either, so you basically are invisible for a while. Gore can be done in the same room. And, due to druids killing with healthdamage in sap, and gore doing healthdamage, it's instakill has a higher possibility of going through than the manainsta from swoop, simply because you don't use mana while frantically trying to cure out of sap.
I agree that gore should prolly do more damage, you got to remember that gore is STR based while swoop (prolly) is intbased. Maybe changing gore's look to the druid summoning some ghostly stag to gore, and making it intbased would fix that problem. When swoop used to go through shields it was really bad even outside of saplock, heh. Now that that's been changed, I don't really mind getting swooped once, I'll just climb down, shield and force the druid to come down too.

And you got to remember, 25% isn't THAT small for anyone. Corys cudgel did 200 damage to me with a crocsphere, 300 or so at most with normal buffs. Out of the 8k or so I have unsurged, it's far faster to gore me than it is to cudgel me.

Oh yeah, is gore still preventing gored people from leaving the room? If so, that's actually not too bad either.

But I won't argue that gore is worse than sweep outside of a sapkill.

Paralysis counts as prone for stagstomp, and you can use treebane to kick them down, which should prone them, I think. And yeah, I was still thinking sap is 1 second instead of the 0.5 seconds it is now (something which I don't really understand, sap really only killed you if it was timed very good before, this just requires excellent timing now.)
I remember motes not being able to be timed, which is pretty weird since they do hit every 10 seconds.
And as I said, killing with sap is all about timing, heh. Dreamweavers get deepsleep, blackout and narcolepsy, runists get stupidity, impatience and active paralysis, ecologists get fetishes, which could prolly be nasty in sap.

Swoop - If I just stood and someone swooped me repeatedly and I just sipped / scrolled / sparkled.. I'd die. You can define 'a of damage' by 'I can't outsip it, if it's done to me even without any other afflictions added, after a while I'm dead'. Thus I think that : censor: -does- describe it. And I usually have 7k+ mana and level 1 sip bonus. (It did like 1100-1200 health + 400-500 mana to me I think. Way atop of gore).

Gore on the other hand does so little that I outreg it and don't even need to sip. That is what I call 'negliable'. On top of that Gore damaga can even (mostly) be blocked by an artifact..

And yes cudgel damage is just a joke. It's been said though that druids can bleed to death.. while Shorlen says the druid bleed isn't that great. So what now?

That was discouraging.

6995h, 4339m, 6480e, 10p, 30042en, 18345w elrxk /20:13:16.250/<>-
The loud caw of a crow from above makes you shiver, just as Pentu suddenly
swoops down from the branches above and digs her talons into your flesh,
dragging you back up into the trees.
6519h, 3492m, 6480e, 10p, 30042en, 18345w elrxk /20:13:16.781/<>

Now, if you need to cure up, just shield, that works now.

And yeah, somethings seems to have happened to the bleeding cudgel does...

You say, "Do it five times."
7484h, 3897m, 6480e, 10p, 31007en, 18109w elrxkp<>-
Pentu says, "Pssshhhh..."
7484h, 3897m, 6480e, 10p, 31007en, 18109w elrxkp<>-
The end of Pentu's cudgel forms a knotty burl and she points it at you. The burl
pops and ruptures, shooting a barrage of splinters into your flesh.
A magic aura flares around you and completely absorbs the damage.
7272h, 3897m, 6480e, 10p, 31027en, 18123w elrxkp<>-
You bleed 118 health.
7366h, 3972m, 6480e, 10p, 31027en, 18123w elrxkp<>-
The ghostly outline of a gyfu rune briefly appears in front of you before
slamming into your forehead.
7366h, 3972m, 6480e, 10p, 31047en, 18137w elrxkp<>-
The end of Pentu's cudgel forms a knotty burl and she points it at you. The burl
pops and ruptures, shooting a barrage of splinters into your flesh.
6942h, 3972m, 6480e, 10p, 31047en, 18137w elrxkp<>-
You bleed 197 health.
6745h, 3972m, 6480e, 10p, 31067en, 18151w elrxkp<>-
The end of Pentu's cudgel forms a knotty burl and she points it at you. The burl
pops and ruptures, shooting a barrage of splinters into your flesh.
A magic aura flares around you and completely absorbs the damage.
6533h, 3972m, 6480e, 10p, 31067en, 18151w elrxkp<>-
You bleed 183 health.
6724h, 4047m, 6480e, 10p, 31087en, 18165w elrxkp<>-
The end of Pentu's cudgel forms a knotty burl and she points it at you. The burl
pops and ruptures, shooting a barrage of splinters into your flesh.
6300h, 4047m, 6480e, 10p, 31087en, 18165w elrxkp<>-
The ghostly outline of a gyfu rune briefly appears in front of you before
slamming into your forehead.
6300h, 4047m, 6480e, 10p, 31087en, 18165w elrxkp<>-
The end of Pentu's cudgel forms a knotty burl and she points it at you. The burl
pops and ruptures, shooting a barrage of splinters into your flesh.
5876h, 4047m, 6480e, 10p, 31107en, 18179w elrxkp<>-
You bleed 286 health.

Notice: I rubbed a Kingdom, didn't clot though, so that's how it would've performed in sap.

Ohhh. and for reference:

7484h, 4354m, 6480e, 10p, 30040en, 18345w elrxk /20:13:21.093/<>-
The loud caw of a crow from above makes you shiver, just as Pentu suddenly
swoops down from the branches above and digs her talons into your flesh,
dragging you back up into the trees.
A magic aura flares around you and completely absorbs the damage.
7484h, 3507m, 6480e, 10p, 30060en, 18345w elrxk /20:13:22.953/<>