Specifically my character is a Tri-Transed Black Talon with Ecology as my tertiary skill set. I do not have any non-guild skills beyond master as of yet. I am working on progressing to shield parry in Combat. I have finally managed to stock up my vials, herbs, and basic enchants with a few exceptions (a waterwalk enchant and magic proofing for my robes).

Thus far in Lusternia my limited PvP experience was as a Wiccan. That involved mainly ordering entourage attack @target and keeping my int buffed as high as I possibly could. My methods were limited and my attacks were easy to remember double letter aliases and Ctrl + numberpad bindings.

Any suggested strategies or techinical advice for someone nearly completely new to playing a Druid?

Holy crap, a fighting Blacktalon!?

Basically fighting as a solo druid revolves almost entirely around sticking Sap on your opponent. You'll want to time it with your demesne so that as you sap them it paralyses them and you vine them and such, and then you'll use vines/fetish/smudges/etc to keep them sapped, and then gradually kill them with cudgel or swoop.

That's the basic gist of it, though I'm sure others could go into more detail (I've never been a druid myself).

Hey!

Actually, there are both current and former Blacktalon who are far more qualified to give advice than I am. Also, I'm a Dreamweaver, so I can't really speak to the use of Ecology. Finally, nearly all of my combat has been group combat, not 1 on 1, as in raid defense.

Some general things to get you going:

1) Your cudgel is the worst part of your offense (although this has potential to change with that haemophilia poison). When I first started fighting, my strategy was: point cudgel until they die. Well, I did the pointing part, but the dying part never seemed to happen. So, spend a lot of time researching your other abilities.

For the BT, kills generally seem to come down to saplock, sleeplock, swoop, and thornlash (although saplock is by far the highest-percentage out of those, and mutually exclusive with thornlash - additionally, most people who have some experience under their belt are just not going to allow a thornlash or swoop to work).

2) Don't let anyone talk you into fighting outside your demesne. Especially as a BT, you can easily dismiss taunts about honor or cowardice or any such things. This is also something you have to discipline yourself for, because during a raid, for instance, you want to get to it and start fighting ASAP, but this will severely limit your effectiveness. Most defense leaders understand that a druid should set up a demesne, so definitely take the time to set one up.

3) If you're in a group, Briars affect both friends and enemies.

4) If I had to pick something to focus on, I'd pick learning demesne/treelife timing - vines - sap. I'm sure there are venom combos that will also help, but I've probably already spoken too much about combat commensurate with my skill level. I'll not do the added disservice of talking about a skillset of which I know nothing.

Blacktalon...always take your Crow Totem pet along.

Be prepared to be climbing up and down a LOT during the fight.

Druids are a lot about timing. You want to sap before the demesne hits, so that they get afflicted with paralysis and cannot rub cleanse. Since you don't have Stagstomp, I'm not really sure what BT's use besides Vines and runes/ecology to keep people in Sap.

Ecology? I think you've got niricol there for blindness. If they're blind, they can't rub their enchanted stuff (I think) and therefore can't cure. You can berserk anerod-morphite to REALLY screw them up. You may be able to get off a lucky charybdon that gives them crotamine, but that isn't terribly reliable. Hadrudin-Mactans (disloyalty/shiver) combos in sap would probably work well, especially against entity users.

It is the timing aspect of the demesne that I am really unsure of. As a Wiccan if I needed to perform a certain action at a certain time (say after one of my fae attacked) I would set up a color note to trigger to remind me what alias to use. Should demesne timing be automated or can it be done manually?

Automated is the best way as you'll get better results. While you could try it manually odds are you'd have a demesne that was all over the place. If you use mushclient I have a sample of a demesne timing alias you could use, let me know if you want it.

Thornlashes can be used pretty effectively against 'mid-card' fighters too. Its all about the bounce with lashes. You start sticking them and then get treebane and treelife working in tandem so that they keep getting moved back and forth from trees to ground. This is one of the times the cudgel isn't completely useless since while you've got them bouncing you want to increase the amount they bleed as much as possible.

Again though, only for mid-card fighters. It won't go over so well with people that really know how to handle themselves.

Thought these stats might be an interesting read...
lv 72 shadowcaster faeling
49/52 greatrobes
No defences up
Rhann has trans druidry so cudgel is at its maximum damage
(edited for ease of reading)

TEST 1
2748h, 4044m, 4044e, 10p elrx-

The end of Rhann's cudgel forms a knotty burl and he points it at you. The burl
pops and ruptures, shooting a barrage of splinters into your flesh.
1858h, 4044m, 4044e, 10p elrx-
drink health
You take a drink from a bloodstone vial.
The potion heals and soothes you.
2410h, 4044m, 4044e, 10p elrx-

You bleed 194 health.

TEST 2
You nod your head emphatically.
2748h, 4044m, 4044e, 10p elrx-

The end of Rhann's cudgel forms a knotty burl and he points it at you. The burl
pops and ruptures, shooting a barrage of splinters into your flesh.
1858h, 4044m, 4044e, 10p elrx-
drink health
You take a drink from a bloodstone vial.
The potion heals and soothes you.
2594h, 4044m, 4044e, 10p elrx-

You may drink another health, mana, or bromide potion.
2594h, 4044m, 4044e, 10p elrx-

You bleed 237 health.

TEST 3
2748h, 4044m, 4044e, 10p elrx-

The end of Rhann's cudgel forms a knotty burl and he points it at you. The burl
pops and ruptures, shooting a barrage of splinters into your flesh.
1858h, 4044m, 4044e, 10p elrx-
drink health
You take a drink from a bloodstone vial.
The potion heals and soothes you.
2354h, 4044m, 4044e, 10p elrx-

You bleed 232 health.

TEST 4 (slightly less health)
2667h, 3706m, 4044e, 10p elrx-

The end of Rhann's cudgel forms a knotty burl and he points it at you. The burl
pops and ruptures, shooting a barrage of splinters into your flesh.
1777h, 3706m, 4044e, 10p elrx-
drink health
You take a drink from a bloodstone vial.
The potion heals and soothes you.
2378h, 3706m, 4044e, 10p elrx-

You bleed 222 health.


Now I may be wrong but this seems fairly pathetic considering I had no defences up and fairly average greatrobes. Could we give the cudgel some love? Suggestions?

890 health is a lot, isn't it? Considering there is the bleeding, as well as the fact that you started with a small amount of health anyway.

That would be appreciated.

world.send "aquacast needlerain demesne"
world.AddTimer "tsunami", 0, 0, 10, "aquacast tsunami demesne", 5, ""
world.AddTimer "icefloe", 0, 0, 20, "aquacast icefloe demesne", 5, ""
world.AddTimer "jellies", 0, 0, 30, "aquacast jellies demesne", 5, ""

The 10, 20, and 30 are how long it waits to cast each one. So it'll cast needle rain right off, wait 10, cast tsunami, etc. You can keep adding more of those till you have what you need, instead of send to world have it send to script Don't mess with the 5 on the end though. I'm not sure but I think druid demesne's timing needs to be a bit different than the wait 10 for druid ones. You can always test and make revisions where needed though.

Hmm. After searching a bit if I am reading correctly Druid demesne effects fire off on 10 second intervals. So, could I then create an alias called 'FD' and then stack the various forestcast commands using doafter?

That's wrong, they can't point at themselves, can still rub it.

For all other questions, I suggest you talk with Nirrti!

(And Cudgel does about 200 to me. <.<)

cudgel needs a lot of help as it's been already stated, it's just up to the envoys to come up with a solution. cudgel completely sucks in every way. the bleeding isn't even that good. the damage is pitiful, generally the bleeding does more than the damage.

try talking to Xavius, dreamweavers, runists are best for one v one druid fights. Xavius knows quite a bit about it he even had a post on a runist strategy somewhere.

We did have something up for it, and then someone said it wasn't necessary. So the idea is still just... sitting there.

Alrighty. After figuring out some copy & pasting issues, and the assistance of a very helpful forum member, I have the demesne timing issues settled. I think I can survive with macros for Ecology and Crow skills. I was thinking morphite/charybon for my fetish. I guess I'll have to wait for the opportunity to arise to see how things go. My expectations are not terribly high. I have never put the effort into PvP before and I don't have the non-guild skills to fight properly. I am looking forward to the effort.

wow wtf? please open up another topic or bring it up on envoys again, everyone knows Druid cudgels blow. I mean come on take that quote you put up from Aesyra, all of seren literally tells their druids never to use their cudgels.

It was the Hartstone envoy at the time, and I think it's still sitting there waiting for the Hartstone / Blacktalon envoys to finish it.

If you can, try reaching trample in riding? It will be easier to tear the target apart, and could be used as the stag stomp. The problem is that it takes around 8 power, so it isn't that efficent.

How about enchantments? Is enfeeble useful as a Blacktalon? Or would another enchantment be more...

Er.. no. Trample and Stag Stomp are entirely different.

I'm too baffled by that post to say much more than that.