If you don't suck and you're not fighting someone with acrobatics, you can stick sap with just druidry. It's not effective or efficient, and you'd mostly be taking advantage of the fact that most people handle sap with a single action queue, rather than something that concurrently uses all cure balances. If you're having problems, the most common cause is that you aren't tracking your opponent's curing, but there are people out there who you just plain can't pull this off against. This is not the notorious, uncurable-after-20-seconds-without-trueheal saplock that you read about.

I can't speak for everyone, but I always found that reading combat spam was pretty easy. Make sure you put faeriefire on your target and watch for the writhe messages. Sometimes this means you need to sit on-eq and "waste" offensive opportunities. There's no substitute for experience here; only intuition will tell you when a writhe is pending.

The hardest part of a saplock with no tertiary skills worth mentioning is the first four seconds. You have two basic methods here: exploit poor coding around thornlash, or time sap with your opponent's offense.

The first is probably the most straightforward. Once upon a time, this method worked like a charm, but Treant is not subject to this trick, so don't get your hopes up too much.

Steps:
- apply faeriefire (which you should do in all fights early on anyways)
- thornlash once
- wait

One of three things will happen: it won't cure, they writhe off right away, or they ignite. If they ignite, you have a trigger for a four-second eq loss. This is useful and will be covered later. If they writhe off right away and they don't have something like divinefire or psimet, you can keep spamming thornlash until they bleed out. If they don't cure, you might have an opening for a saplock.

Thornlash saplock, cont.:
- confirm that your opponent will not attempt to cure a single thornlash
- apply vines
- track curing

Alright, so here's where it gets fun. Many people use "untargetted" writhe when faced with entanglement. If this happens, they're going to writhe off the thornlash first. You can see the difference by the output received from your opponent writhing. If you see them writhe free of thorny vines, you've got an opening for saplock. If you see them writhe free of entanglement, you get to try the method below.

Thornlash saplock, executed:
- Check demense timing
- Thornlash 2-3 seconds after demesne tick
- Chase balance with vines
- Chase balance with sap
- Chase balance with vines

Now you get to track curing and keep vines applied. You can't use thornlash on a sapped target, so no more tricks here. Entangle every time they writhe free right away. Let storm and thorns do most of the damage.

===

Second method is taking advantage of your opponent being off-eq. Cleanse is a 4-sec eq move. The idea is to hit them with sap when they can't take another action. This is easymode against a psionic mage, but pretty hard against everyone else.

The basic idea here is that you need to be on-eq when your opponent does something that takes at least four seconds for bal/eq within four seconds of your demesne tick. For a psionic mage, you just wait for their superstratus attack and profit. For a rapier-wielding knight, you need to find a way to put them off-eq, like with ignite or a lucky stupidity tick.

Assuming that you're fighting a class that habitually uses a moderately long eq attack, there are two big challenges here. One, you're a druid, and you're squishy like a weevil. The entire point of this tactic is that you stand there and get your face smashed without the opportunity to shield. You can't do that for long. Two, if the attack prones you, you obviously can't sap, so you get to try again on the next demesne tick. You only have a half second window to sap. Anyways, assuming you pull this off and get eq back before they cleanse, you chase balance with vines and continue as above.


Needless to say, if you want to save yourself some frustration, get tri-trans.

It's funny how closely the general strategies you listed there match up with my general strategies for sticking ectoplasm.

I guess we are cleanse cure brothers!

<3

Really need to read the whole post, honey cakes, and answer while considering his problems. He mentioned how they "cleanse as if nothing happened." So the question is, once again, how can he attain a sap lock, as he can not perpetuate what he does not have. "Where can I squeeze a greater variety of afflictions in...I need a way to stick sap" is not answered by "with a curse scroll after the sap lock you can't get."

Great, we can get past the curse scroll now.

Azoth: Runes. If you are staying runist, get runes. You just aren't going to be that dangerous without a tertiary. Narsrim likes dreamweaving. Perhaps it's simply a matter of preference. I believe that blacktalon bleeding (300 from nightsweets, 150-250 per cudgel, however much from thorns, 150 a tic from belch) plus focus balance loss, plus embeded haegle as well as active mana drain (caw, swoop, double haegl) is just downright nasty for a guild with a mana kill and does not rely on sap sticking for eternity.

Try Xavius's suggestions.

The one problem I saw while scanning over it is that if you chase writhing with vines and rely on just vines over and over+demesne for a lock you'd either have to get really lucky with confusion/shivers/blacklung long enough to blast off a few cudgels of swoop them to death or they'll tank you forever assuming their health isn't crap.

As an aside: Narsrim mentioned blacklung, which is balance loss. I was under the impression confusion only increased eq, though I could be wrong. Any confirmation one way or the other?

Confusion only increases eq.

Wait a second... did Gregori say that he answered the question? Because I'm pretty sure that I did.

Anyways, on top of just the afflictions that the scroll of curses gives, it forces someone to diagnose. While both sapped and afflicted with one of the many great curses on the scroll, this adds even more time for you to load up on afflictions. Once you've transed runes, you'll want Haegl, Eoh, Othala, Cen, Daeg, and Sigil embedded at all times. I'm not really sure if there's a limit to how many runes you can have embedded at once, but I know you can stack at least a few - try to time them to all go off at the same time.

Also... If you're fighting with a warrior, tell them to use Chansu and doublesling Gyfu and Ger when your buddy strikes. I'm not exactly sure if this particular tactic works, but it's worth a shot.

There needs to be a rigorous reading comprehension test included as part of the forum registration process. Not only would it keep the bots out, but it would solve other problems too!

You can fuse up to 6 runes in a room but only one will fire at a time, chosen at random. I wouldn't infuse more than one or two, or it might be too hard to track what's going on with my enemy's affs.

What? Forced diagnose and multiple simultaneous rune hits? You should stop posting until you know what you are talking about.

Making me dizzy with all your weird information.

Oops, I goofed. It's dysentery that knocks off eq.

Okay, a really basic thing people have yet to suggest are basic enchantments. Sleep enchant for one can work well. For a runist it is a bit harder, however if you eventually learn beastmastery, it sync's up perfectly. I also, suggest learning more runes, but understand when it is not possible. I'd give up your shield or a sling or just drop your cudgel and use a web enchantment and make a quick alias to unwield/wield whenever needed. Narsrim suggested crow spit, which I would use over curse scroll as well. If you happen to notice that a person cures sap by pointing it at themselves, you can eyepeck twice as pointing does not work while blind. This doesn't work if they rub, which most do, but it's something to look for. Casting treebane is a great way to help stick a saplock. It fires reliably fast and I would use it before sap locking, not after since it is a 20-30 second curse. If you don't know, it will knock them out of the trees passively as well as breaking 1-2 limbs. Any broken limb will stop sap curing. So you can continue to break limbs by raising cudgel (which also stuns) and watching them fall a few seconds later. If you want more help locking, try slinging cen for stupidity. Gyfu will buy you at least 1.5 seconds before they can cure sap. Isa my help too. Ger also helps, especially after the demesne paralyses them.