With mage and druid melds reduced from being area-spanning fortresses into something more like mobile defense platforms, I think we could use some more utility to make up for the severely reduced scope of our offense. Namely, either new effects with defensive/support purposes rather than offensive ones, or changes to existing abilities that give them both offensive and defensive functions. Aquamancers already have a handful of these, but they could use the help as much as any of us.

My first suggestion would actually be to redo the transcendant druidry/-mancy abilities. Nobody uses them, nobody has ever really used them. Ten power just to deal damage is too much, even if it's a lot of damage - you're not going to kill a demigod with it unless you get lucky. Possible replacements:

Fury/Pollute/Maelstrom
PLANT CUDGEL/STAFF
Power: 2
A mage may focus the full extent of their powers through their staff, driving it into the ground and radiating a shockwave of elemental energies throughout their demesne. This will cause all of their active affects to fire in each room of the meld regardless of their position within it. 5 seconds of equilibrium, and casting it causes the demesne timer to reset as if it had fired normally (ie it won't fire normally until 10 seconds after casting this). Could also deal some additional damage or an additional affliction (vines in a druid meld, forced to ground elevation in a geomancer's, etc.) It could also be modeled more closely after the current versions of fury, etc. with reduced cost and damage, but the ability to dissolve and maybe unshield all of your enemied within your demesne. A 3p ability that strips protection/shield and vines would make traversing a demesne trickier than it's become but would only aid our offense in a secondary fashion.

Or! How about summoning elementals? There could be a power lower down in the skillsets to summon an individual elemental for 2p, for example, and a trans skill to summon them throughout your demesne.

ELEMENTAL
Forestcast Elemental
Cost: 2p
You may conjure forth a Wyrden Elemental from the roots and vines of the forest, either in your room or an adjacent forest location. The elemental will strike at your enemies with the fury of the forest, entangling them with vines, pummeling them with their earthen fists, and belching clouds of wyrden locusts to feed on their flesh. If cast within your demesne the elemental will become immune to critical hits and will patrol your meld for enemies.

DARKGROWTH
Forestcast Darkgrowth
Cost: 10p
Deep beneath the forest floor, ancient forces stir. With an immense expenditure of power you can call forth upon these forces, raising an army of Wyrden Elementals (4?) to defend the forest. They will be accompanied by a Twilit Wyrmling, one of the Wyrdling's countless burrowing spawn which gnaw at the roots of the oldest trees. This Wyrmling will grind your foes to a pulp within its maw, and spits a corrupting poison.

So every guild would have a version of these powers with varied appearance and afflictions on the creatures. They would take 4-5 hits to kill and their damage would be more of a nuisance than a real threat, unless you're getting hit by a couple of them, or they're fighting alongside the druid that summoned them. Also: lower the cost power on regrowth and its elemental equivalents! Melders are more vulnerable than ever with only their immediate area being hit by effects, which makes raising them quickly a priority.

As you can see I've got a million different ideas, and I'm not nearly motivated enough to flesh them out. That's why I'm not a god, or an envoy (also the emotional instability and lack of combat skillz). These are just some rough ideas. Another one that was floated around in the envoy thread (I think) was allowing mages and druids to take on elemental forms themselves. Feel free to talk about that as well!

I must say I like your idea for changing the Trans skill, and I love summoning elementals and also transforming into one. I'm not a mage or druid and I've never really played one or I'd give more specific feedback! But I for one love these ideas!

So, with PLANT STAFF, would you be able to spam it after the 5 second EQ? Meaning for a 10 power drain, and the inability to do anything else, you get 5 demesne ticks in 25 seconds instead of 50, and have it affect the whole demesne?

Eh I'm on the fence. Personally I'd like to see the Trans skill as something that can be useful outside of the meld, maybe like:

PLANT STAFF
Power: 10
The caster slams his staff into the ground, causing the room and all adjacent rooms to tremble with the power of the Earth/Water/Wyrd. If used inside of the caster's demesne, it will affect each room inside the meld for half the power and equilibrium cost.

Allows for demesne effects to be used outside of the mages demesne, as an adjacent AoE attack on enemies in the next room (read: enemy meld?). One tick that fires all effects (eg forceflood), ignores shield/protection, deals extra damage, maybe have effects (eg jelly stun) last twice as long. Situationally useful to maybe start off an attack, buy your allies some time, or time with existing demesne effects to provide a long period of lockdown. I'm thinking a 6 second eq cooldown, down to 3 in a meld.

The real benefit of this power would be allowing other mages to bring their demesne effects into play without having to hold the meld themselves. So for 30 power, three geomancers (one holding the meld) could total four ticks of unresistable demesne damage in a 10 second window. Too OP? IDK, but I like the idea of the trans skill allowing the use of the rest of the damn skill tree in an area you haven't melded.

I think this was what the admin specifically did not want. Though the trans/high end skills bringing druids out of the meld is cool I don't think this is the way it will happen.

I had a similar idea, but rather than planting your staff in a room causing it to act as though it's a demesne, have it serve as a mini-totem or statue. Example for da blacktalon...

TOTEMPOLE - Nature is always at your side
PLANT CUDGEL
TOTEMCAST EXPEL
TOTEMCAST LURE
TOTEMCAST DETONATE
Cost: 6 power (2 to expel or lure)
While druids traditionally depend upon their forest melds for protection, sometimes a faster solution is needed. You may PLANT your cudgel in the ground, allowing it to draw strength from the roots of the world and form into a miniature totem, bringing the wrath of nature to any environment. As long as your totem stands, it will periodically strike at your personal enemies with entangling vines, rending thorns and dark runes which randomly inflict blackout, vomiting or blacklung. Note that unlike your demesne, the totem will only attack one enemy at a time, though it will strike faster if there are more enemies present. Expel attempts to force all of your enemies out of the room, while lure will draw them in from adjacent locations. Detonating your totem will cause a large amount of cutting damage and bleeding to all enemies present and will destroy your cudgel.

You may remove your cudgel from the ground without destroying it simply by PULLing on it. It requires several attempts for anyone else to pull it out, and they will be struck by exploding needles each time they try. Your totem will not function within a melded room, though it will prevent melding if it is present, and it cannot be planted if a totem, monolith (geomancer version) or spire (aquamancer) is already present.

Myself I would love it if there was a lesser version of liquid form/whatever for mages, y'know, like a general defence somewhat like crowform?

the idea of the forms was I guess similar to metamorphosis, you have your normal form which has access to all your demesne and then elemental/forestall form which gives you different abilities more focused on survival without relying on the meld. There could be actual demesner vs demesner battles. Oh too tired to type it out right now, but yeah... maybe they could take their battle on to a different playing field or something?

Yeah, that sounds better. Maybe give it the requirement of already having a demesne, similar to a Druid Grove skill in Achaea: so you need to TOTEMCAST INFUSE while standing in a Meld, with any active demesne effects you want to infuse, cast. One power per demesne effect to charge, then one power per demesne effect to PLANT. So you should be able to retreat to your own meld, set some abilities to charge your staff (i.e. to be annoying, sandstorm + rubble), then jump back into the fray relatively quickly; or charge up an uber-totem, wait for power, and unleash it all with a high power move. There's a good deal of room for customisability there. Perhaps, while your staff/cudgel is infused with the demesne effects, it persists like that through death/logout etc till the staff is planted or destroyed, making the prospect of jumping a lone mage at least a little risky.

I mean, we don't want to discourage mages/druids from having a meld at all: we want to give them a tool to help out when pushing into territory held by another mage/druid, and increase their prowess outside of said meld. I understand that the admins don't want mages or druids to have the benefit of their melds where-ever they go, but this ability acts more like a single-target turret or pet than a real threat to groups. In any group fight, the holder of the meld should still have the advantage, but at least fellow mages would be able to contribute a little bit.

Some interesting ideas! I actually think the planting staff idea is kind of neat. You should talk to your envoys as they're writing up a report to address the impact on demesne changes. One thing that is not on the table is having demesne effects outside of demesnes but, like I said, some interesting ideas here!

Carry on!

I would like to see Trans Druidry actually do something. I was thinking something along the lines of a Forest form or something.

It would lengthen the time it takes for people to writhe from your vines/thorn lashes by a little, and would increase the base damage of cudgel.

I think that alone would be worth it for me as a Druid, so it would boost both combat -and- bashing. (because druid bashing sucks T_T)

Just what the world needs, more vine-whoring.

(I'd prefer not to see that, but eh.)

What Xenthos said actually..

You just said like 4 ways to passively entangle.. no thanks to passive entangles from a druid even more so please.

Other than that its a good concept to try to work with.

Are you talking about my idea? Because I didn't say anything about passive entangles.

I am not sure giving Druids Sylvan Viridian is the way to go.

Druids really need a means to work without being confined to a meld. How you do that with just a special report on druidry I am not sure. Though months ago I did email Estarra about splitting Ecology into bard ecology and druid ecology (much how there is mage pscionics and monk psionics and mage illusions and bard illusions) so that the two could be buffed/nerfed independantly of each other without making one guild OP by making the other viable.

Maybe that could be looked at.

I'd really rather not have to switch tertiaries in order to be any sort of possible threat outside my demesne. I'd rather see Trans Druidry be something useful.

Except that it is the tertiary that makes you a threat outside your meld. For mages that is Psionics, for druids that was supposed to be Ecology, except that Ecology fell far short of that.

You take your pick strong in your meld with runes and dreamweaving or strong outside your meld with ecology. There is no reason you should have your cake and eat it too.

Not to mention that unless you make trans druidry completely OP it is not going to make you much of a threat outside your meld. Whereas having a skillset that you can balance each of the skills in can make you strong outside.

That's true.

However, trans druidry still needs to be something useful. Unleash cudgel is worthless right now.

Soothsaying for druids, go go go go go.

To be fair Fury has been waiting since last January to be fixed. Even approved as a report, and every time I asked on Envoys if it would get dealt with I was told "yes" then it never was. I guess assigning a damage source to a skill is hard work.

Edit:; This isn't say that it wouldn't still suck if it had been fixed, just that we have waited a year so far and are still waiting to find that information out

And Unleash Staff is about as useless. To kill or even really hurt most opponents you need to blow 10p and all your effects for the chance at a lucky shot. And hope that you haven't been lusted.

Though I'd not mind a skill that reduces or removes the EQ cost/requirement of rejecting lust, come to think.