Psh, I have no idea what you are talking about. Deathmask is totally on par with swift stripes, and all those arial battles people get in? Yeah, Crow totally wins with the flying regen. We own trill. Oh and birdseye, nothing like a gimped scry to really make a skillset awesome. Decoy > all.

/sarcasm

Birdseye isn't gimped scry at all. I'm guessing you forgot what it does.

Birdseye is a gimped scry that doesn't trigger aethersight. I don't know about you, but I don't get an abundance of useful information from aethersight triggering on scry.

I get enough useful information that if it isn't being tripped it annoys me (or would if I knew about it.)

There is one single use for birdseye. This one use is the only time that birdseye is better than scry.

When you scry them and can't figure out what area that room is in? Track and birdseye can't be used inside or in the mountains...so their uses are fairly limited.

Uhm, if Birdseye works anywhere, which I have no clue if it does, but it seems it does! You've got to be kidding me to say its not worth it. Scry sets off aethersight, which in turn alarms the group you're watching then. Now 90% of the Lusternians out there when detecting a scry from an enemy assume a battle is going to occur. If you can prevent them from knowing that's going to happen, and still keep an eye on them? You got it made.

Birdseye doesn't work from anywhere, but you're right, it's definitely worth it for that specific reason. I used to have an aethersight-penetrating scry that I had to be in a specific room for and before it got nerfed it was -awesome.-

EDIT: Right, and track...isn't that basically ninja outside teleport? Same as track from Achaea? That's awesome too.

Just my very worthless opinion as I have maybe 5 fights under my belt as a Blacktalon, all resulting in my demise. I went with runes. It gives you a use in every battle, and you can re-rune the forest if you are into the whole planting trees and F'ai Glom RP of it all. Best thing is you can get excellent use of the skillset with only 50 lessons or so (maybe 100, I forget, but not many). This leaves plenty for tradeskills or aethercrafting or what have you.

Birdseye is useful. I use it frequently.

Being in outdoor places I cannot fly (like the mountains) is annoying, though.

It's local area only, though. Both people have to be outdoors too, so the use is rather limited (no undervault). At least from a druid perspective, flow nearly always works better. I suppose for warriors it could be good, but as we all know, Crow is so that only Xenthos is man enough to take it on.

Oh, I didn't know it was local area only. Ok, I guess that isn't great then.

And it's hardly . It's just not awesome.

Compare it to the other three Totem options, and when looked at that way, it is a bit closer to (for warriors at least). But, yes, not having Flow, track is a decent alternative. (The whole fly;wait;track;wait;land thing usually gives the person time to move, but eh, it's better than nothing.)

The whole "flow" thing usually gives the person time to move.

But it doesn't add in extra time for flying and waiting for that balance regain, plus having to land as well (or glance down in order to see if they're still in the room, so you don't have to waste time flying again).

Instead it has: Flow, Oh , someone flowed to me. RUNNNNNN AWAY.

Shroud?

Right, but that's not that relevant. They're going to get away if you flow raw. Conversely, when you spend two balances to track, unless they're already moving you'll be on-balance when you land. Also, if they -are- moving then you only waste one balance repeating yourself, same as with flow.

How may reliable shrouds do Nature users have?

Did they fix blend so you don't have to reactivate it every single time you move into a forest yet?