I expected it. Most of the playerbase opposed the Demesne nerf, as I'm aware of it, and it still went through.

What are groves like? I've heard of them and how they're like more permanent demesnes, but I can't see such a thing being useful at all. Do you just stay online 24/7 if your grove happens to be in a strategically important area?

As I recall, a grove is a player made room that contains trees which grant you certain abilities while they stand

wrong

If I recall from my Achaea days, grove is basically a forest room that a druid or sylvan imprints as his own, which lets them defend it with room-wide effects (active and passive), gather sunlight to power personal abilities, and at the trans level, a druid can move the grove to their current room (which is pretty much needed to make it worthwhile in combat.

Pretty much except that some of the abilities are area-wide, for example summon/forestbinding, some summon npcs to defend it, others require multiple druids joined together to function.

Imperian expanded it beyond forests allowing druids to imprint pretty much any natural environment type with the portability skill being usable in the environment you imprinted plus two others depending on the type you chose (I think)

The only reason for the comment is that with the shrinking of meld size and aoe it feels like that's where we are going. If done right it could be potentially interesting and restore some of the old "defending the area"ness with area-wide skills.

@Azoth: With portability you can have people bonded to locations on prime and then move them temporarily to a location they need to defend.

Achaean Skill list: http://www.achaea.com/lore/Groves
Imperian Skill list: http://www.imperian.com/features_skills.php?file=9.7

I have a Druid in Aetolia. We don't want groves. Nobody wants to fight a team inside a grove and outside of a grove, the Druid is pretty much useless. Plus the whole sunlight component means that any active fighter is only useful for like...3-4 fights and then has to spend several RL days recuperating.

Almost useless outside of demesnes here.

Why do the ability lists of skills in other IREs seem bloody huge compared to ours?

Minus the sunlight thing you've effectively described druids/mages here, except that here druids abilities only affect their "grove" or the rooms directly beside it... maybe. Though looking at bonding/metamorphosis/elementalism, it might not be too bad.



Because they are? Metamorphosis might make you feel better until you notice the abilities the morphs gift.

I know I don't need more skills. I have enough trouble trying to understand and use all the skills I already have.

depends on what the abilities are.

Groves has scry, area based who, climb up, teleport to the grove, scent, that arti that shows entrance into an area, vines, antisummon, tracking of a target, portal from forest location to your grove, summon to grove, flow, healing and curing abilities, cubix-like location, lock down a forest, res, range attack.

The main difference, aside from the size of area, however is that you can only bring your AoE setup (for Druids) into about...half of the areas in the game, if even that many. Anything that doesn't survey as jungle or forest or that type of natural terrain (Aetolia is more generous, it's even worse in other IREs) you can't do anything in except some pretty dull damage or laughable single-affliction skills. From how I understand it in Lusternia, you are limited outside of your demense, yeah, but you're not limited in where you can meld, except via certain mechanics (like needing to quest to Taint Faethorn).

Also, with groves/vibes, once the caster is dead, everything vanishes, whereas here you still have to break, right? Finally, multiple AoEs can hit at once in other IREs, so there is really far less of a "control" game that goes on. Two enemy magi can just focus their vibes at once and both teams can go at it, making a vastly different type of dynamic.

In summary, it's very different here, and I was under the impression that it was intended to be, as it gives a refreshing new approach to AoE classes.

Depends, imperian allows you to bond with different environment types though the effectiveness depends on the way that the areas are designed.

If the majority of what you want to defend is in the same environment type then it doesn't make too much difference, given the history druids/mages here have of summoning their appropriate environment types they could retain that ability but in a more temporary context.



Breaking is dependent on demesne complexity, which is heavily dependent on size. Ten room meld covering Luna, Selene and Albion is breakable quite easily due to the way you would have to meld it, thirty is a different matter. Also demense effects are dead, I forget if motes/runes changed at all, but at the least you need to re-raise all your effects



The only response I can give really is that yes, we have control but it also means that in a single room classes can be exclusive which is part of the problem.


that took forever, was typing between calls.