Yes, you have missed something here.

Chiefly, that you cannot balance based on just taking a snippet from the whole and saying "omg it is unbalanced, fix please!" That's not balance, nor is it even intended to be balance. It's just intended to ask for further defensive enhancements for no reason.

If you want to claim that EthSeren is woefully lacking in defensive capabilities, then actually try to talk about it. Don't say, "Oh, well, all the rest of it is really strong so we're just not going to talk about how they are superior, we're just going to talk about an area where I feel like we are behind and ask that it be beefed up too!" That's not a good foundation for discussion.

You either get to beef up Glom's side so it is more equivalent in the other areas, or you acknowledge that there are differences in both (and there are intended to be). All the advantages with none of the disadvantages is pretty much an unfair request from the get-go.

Agg, I don't know where you want me to go. I don't want to take any of Glom's strengths away, I don't want to add anything to ours. Nothing you cited as being an advantage to Serenwilde will change or be magnified by moving the Aspects as far as I can tell, and no advantage will be gained if the Aspect room is moved somewhere away from the archway but non-line-of-sight or adjacent to nexus or Avatar room.

I don't want to beef up the Aspects themselves, or really make it hard to get to them, I just don't like that they are a spitting distance from the archway. I think moving them to one of the lower rings will make there be a possibility of actually stopping you from getting there, though it is slim. I cannot imagine you saying that moving it there would make it hard to get to or an advantage.

I tried to list everything I could see that related to the Aspects (barring specific skills) and put it all up. All in all, it looks like our Aspect location itself will still be disadvantaged compared to yours if moved, but that's balanced by our Ladies/Aspects being more annoying, and I'm totally cool with not having completely balanced locations. I just think that having it where it is right now is a bit too much.

... you are indeed asking for something to be added to yours. You would not even be asking for this if you were not looking for a defensive enhancement. You are looking for EthSeren's major weakness to be removed / weakened, while not looking at any of the rest.

I want you to either discuss the situation as a whole (and stop with the whole "nothing else matters, just this, let's compare it in a void!" argument), or acknowledge that both sides have positives and negatives and such is really not a bad thing. If you want defensive enhancements, you need to look at the whole picture. That is what I want from you.

There's less obligation to throw yourself into choke springtrap pit fortresses when your Aspect spot isn't one room away from the archway, basically.

And when you have more than two exits to cover.

Gah, now I'm imagining Hallifaxians spring-trapping Vortex Falls right outside of Flame into a pit fortress full of Aeonfields and Balestones. (Please please please don't do that?)

Argh, That's what I have been trying to do, that'w the argument I keep trying to make in saying that things with Avatars and Aspects balance, and trying to list out ALL of the Ethereal advantages/disadvantages.

Looking at your entire picture, it looks to me like moving the Seren Aspects to a non-special room makes it so that you still have a pretty big advantage on Aspects, and we have a pretty big advantage to Avatars. Not only that, I can't imagine how it could be terribly hard to just move the thing back if needed.

I don't want Glomdoring have an advantage to Aspects defensively and offensively. If moved, Glom has a pretty decent advantage to defensive Aspect combat, and pretty decent advantage to offensive Aspect combat. You have a disadvantage on Lady attacking, and neutral (as far as I can see) on Daughter defense. I say neutral there because there could be a mega group at that choke point, or as Talan points out, not. That is also line of sight, one room from nexus, so that would look to make up for some of the not times.

We've got a disadvantage to defensive Aspect combat due to proximity to archway, non-LoS, non-adjacent (+1 shrine mitigates this some), disadvantage to offensive Aspect due to your feather's proximity and so on. In Avatar/Lady defensive combat, we have an advantage dute to our placement, and no advantage or disadvantage to offensive Daughter combat.


Does all of that seem somewhat in line?

If changed, you would still have a defensive Aspect advantage, and a comparative neutral offensive. Ours would not be adjacent to nexus, so that puts it down in comparison, but one more type of shrine up makes up for that. If moved, the entrance to Aspects will defiantly be closer to the archway still then your feather.

That way, you have the same layout of advantages and disadvantages as we do, except our neutral offense is on Avatars, and yours is on Aspects.



That is, unless you are counting the extra shrine as being a massive upgrade. As far as I understand how shrines work, putting up more then one of the same type in an area is not useful because they won't stack. That means we get all three types and you get two of three. Assuming that we both have War and Healing, for offensive and curing things, that means we get shield extra which adds dmp or chance to afflict pacification, which I cannot imagine is deal-breaking.

I really want to know if there is something major I'm missing here. I didn't think that moving the Monolith so it wasn't one room from the archway was such a huge deal, or that it would suddenly make us massively over powered in setup or anything. Apparently I was wrong and that will completely unbalance everything?

I would say that you have an advantage in Daughter combat, actually. Both Daughters and Ladies clump, so with both of them you have to do pulling. With Daughters you have a huge swathe of the forest to pull them to and do whatever you will (which also allows for much easier splitting up of them). It's a lot easier to take advantage of mob pathing with EthGlom's setup and exploit it. Especially when you do not have to worry about Avatars.

Further, you're right that shrine effects do not stack. However if you can't even destroy the shrines, then... well. Not being able to destroy them is a pretty big deal. Shrine effects, especially Gravity, have a significant impact. Gravity impacts being able to ENTER objects (such as the monolith and the archway), as well as standard movement. Having multiples means that it matters less what God representatives are around, because they're all undestroyable anyways.

Edit: Essentially I'm just not seeing that there is a huge imbalance as-is. Both sides have their weaknesses and strengths. Moving the archway behind the Avatars is a huge boost, moving it to LoS of Avatars / Nexus is a huge boost... which means that the only possible areas to move it to without giving it that boost is to keep it right near the archway anyways.

Eh, but we have two directions to pull them out of the area they probably clump (that odd one room connector bit), and they are always close to your nexus and defenders, it's less area to initially defend. That would give you a decent advantage, but the Avatars thing and how you can eventually spread them out would nullify that I think.

I just feel that it's weird to argue with the idea being that you are going to often drop shrines. I think that I've seen the EtherSeren shrine that is not protected by an Avatar (the Cradle one) go down once ever. I don't know of much shrine defiling that goes on outside of huge events, and those are mostly on prime. It is worth noting that you cannot drop our war shrine, but can't you do the same thing by putting your breakpoint on an Avatar? That's the shrine that really packs a major punch in these situations. The one shrine that is really powered by the indestructibility works on both sides, regardless if we get an extra (non-perfect defensed) shrine

EDIT: Wait, how would moving it to say... v4787 be a huge boost?

While they may clump there, they always spread out a little bit to the sides... and you can always go through the trees past them to get smaller numbers from behind them if you really want. For example, at the time of posting this there is one daughter to the east and one to the west of that room. Easy pickings, and as they move they are replenished.

Glomdoring also used to try to defile your shrines much more. It's been given up on because there's just no point, it's impossible to make any headway on most of them. So sometimes we will do the one that is unconnected, but it doesn't really gain us anything. Compare this to shrine-defiling on Nil (which happens rather more regularly because it is not protected by supermobs).

Further, again, the more Shrines you have that are unprotected, the more assured you are that somebody is going to be able to call on them. If you have a Hoaracle and a Maylea war shrine, both invincible, you're more likely to have someone to call upon it than a single Viravain shrine. Since the other War shrines can (and have) been dropped when used.

Beyond that, I don't think you get the idea of 'pulling'. When you do this, you send one person over to visit the mobs that chase. They then lead the mobs back to your merry little band who are safely back out of the way and not "near the enemy". Serenwilde has a much easier time of this because they do not have to go past Avatars while doing so, and single individuals running around / escaping enemy hands has been done (to great effect) since time immemorial. Moondance Full, Serpent, etc. etc. There are huge numbers of skills that let you do this, all of which have no use against Avatars but are great against a chasing enemy when they can't rush into your main force.

Finally: I don't feel like going into EthSeren to look at your vNums, thank you very much!

Hehe, you can do MAP to see the maps for a number from anywhere.

I see your point about having more shrine availability as far as members to call on powers go, but I still think it's a bit weird. I would say that us having more spread out godly leadership would counter that, or that you guys having most people in one order would, but I don't know the full truth of that, and that is always subject to change. Having war power most of the time as opposed to some of the time by a small to medium margin dosn't seem to justify having all the other times have an odd disadvantage. (I don't think we use them much anyways for some reason. I'm not in any active order, can't really figure why) I'm sort of crash coursing on shrines, but I think I've got it all down. I can't quite describe it, but balancing the few times that a power renders the problem harder against all other times means that without it, everything is down too far (or that is how it seems to me).


Eh, looks like pulling works equally well on anyone, no matter what you do. Even disregarding Daughters, having a single room of assault still helps in the long run if anyone want to assault your Avatars or Aspects. Also, I'm not sure, does prismatic barrier exempt you from things like block? It probably does. I'm almost 100% sure that prismatic blocks mobs like Avatars though. Without block, there are still low or no active power ways to shut down movement in and out of that room that go around prismatic barrier, and completely seal (most) of the Daughters in safety. Some of them will amble out on their own, sure.. But that happens on both sides.

Going to check the prismatic thing.

Shrine powers seem to go up rather regularly... it might also be one of those things that is harder to see when they are not hitting you, but they are definitely used on a regular basis. Shrines add a significant amount to a fight, and often it's a matter of, "Oh, shrines going up? Well, time to leave then." At that point the options are usually either defile the shrine or leave, and if you can't defile it...

Sometimes it will continue for a bit beyond that, but that's usually when the 'let's think about pulling out' talk begins.

Prismatic does not let you go past block; what it does is let you cure up so you can leap out of the room (or tumble, or whatever). Or, heck, given that it's a tree environment, just climb up;move in one go. Block only works on that one elevation. Further there are multiple exits out of that room, as well as Nature Flow which works up until Distort is dropped. Escape skills are plentiful. They do not work against supermobs that kill you when you enter the room.

Prismatic will stop mobs from attacking. However, Avatars attack the moment you enter the room. Prismatic drops on movement. As such, it does not work on Avatars. And it is easier to seal when you have Avatars chokepointing the route.

Please... someone start event things. He will do this all day!
<3

What in the world.

Shrines are a huge advantage, and having more people able to call powers is a huge benefit. You can't just say that shrines don't really seem to go up when for almost every time I've seen a raid, we've had to leave because of shrines/liveforest/magnaguch.

Pulling is pulling. It's actually harder to pull ladies because of having to go through trees to avoid avatars compared to daughters who conveniently clump together in one spot. Sure it's harder for the individual raider to do this, but lol, individual raiders only raid ethereal during 4 am anyway, so screw them.

All I got from this thread was, 'blarg etherglom is a fortress, and I am implying that etherwilde is not', then after explaining, it became, 'okay we have advantages too, I won't lie, I was just piggybacking', and now it's, 'OKAY, I just want the monolith moved because it's hard'. At the age where most defenses have at least -one- person with an orgbix, getting to the aspect area is rendered moot. Even then, why would you want to go there when the aspect area has historically also been a popular deathroom.

I don't know, seems like the shrine thing is either a problem with the way shrines and shrine power work, like the only-needing-to-have-one-breakpoint-instead-of-two-like-similar-demesne-breaking thing but I see your point.

I meant that you guys specifically have some skills that aide in stopping movement. Like Night's brume+bonds combined with blocking or walls. Bonds wouldn't be necessary after distort, of course. It would be hard for us to use similar skills to block three entry points on multiple levels. Presumably, surviving a single hit would be a prerequisite for being the 'puller' but there are multiple elevations to get around Avatars in Serenwilde also! (Not really bothering with reflections and the like, because they aren't always avalible)

In trying to find a location that makes the most sense to put the Monolith, what about just moving it one north?
There are more directions to come from at that spot, which makes multiblocking/trapping more onerous without giving us a huge advantage.


It's just that currently, the best place on EtherSeren (not counting Cradle because it is behind Avatars) to camp while you attack Avatars (Ladies) is the entrance to Aspects.

You guys have walls and blocking too. You have pathtwist, which is pretty awesome and has been underused since it got nerfed to stop taking people to avatars. And while you don't have the advantage of brumetower (I'm discounting bonds since you guys like distorting as much as we do), you don't need to go through trees to get to the daughters.

You don't even usually need to get hit when pulling, you just need to enter the room and if the mobs react to you (through an emote or say, blah blah enemy of Moon), then you've got aggro and can pull.

Furthermore, SW has arguably a much, much better raid detection technique in spirits since glom's got envoywarred a bit. You can't underplay the value of knowing when your enemy will strike because it gives you a lot more time to get ready and call powers/help before the enemy can even begin to do anything. You guys even have it triggered to say on SEG.

That goes the same for Glomdoring, and anywhere else. The difference is that it is particularly hard to defile two of our shrines (any way around it would be very tedious, situational, or just tank dependent) as opposed to one.
If the Aspects path was behind the Avatars, it would be stupidly over the top, I agree. If the Aspects path was in a room above the Nexus, that would be too much. I just want it moved somewhere so that you can not multitask killing the two kill-able things on the plane.




Which is why I pointed out that we have an advantage in Avatars but that it did not outweigh the superior placement of your Aspects, and went on to compare the advantages. Also I'd have to say that killing aspects>killing ladies/daughters, if aspects are empowered.




It was more "blargh, change the way things clump, and Feather is a fortress compared to Monolith" and then quickly "Look, piggybacking, no need to change clumping, let them clump all they want, Monolith is still badly placed" to "OKAY, I just want the monolith moved because it's still badly placed" more in that it is too easy to just sit on top of it, going into the 'deathroom' while doing pulling at the same time if you want to. It's not that we have any trouble getting into the Aspects area, it's that it is just very easy for you to do it and attack other things at the same time.

I still hold that the placing of the Serenwilde Aspect area entrance one room away from the archway, not adjacent to the nexus, not line of sight from the nexus is not balanced compared to the cumulative Etheral configuration. Be that as it may, I've suggested that it be moved somewhere not behind aspects, not particularly near the nexus or that it be moved one north. Yes shrines are strong, but that is everywhere, yes pulling happens and there are things that resist it, but that is everywhere. (and In general after all that daughter killing business, if we wanted to go to ASpects, you could just sit in that room, pit both directions, block, shadows, hex, make an unbreakable demesne with breaks on an Avatar and a nexus and make it generally very very hard to get there. Squalling in the feather room south only into a brumed that has a springtrap on it, requiring tumble or leap to get past and stopping groups from coming through, the works.)





Pathtwist only works if the enemy is moving. If they can take one movement and stop moving, having reached the entrance to Aspects and the best point to camp, pathtwist has little chance to break group, which is where it really shines. We would have to go through trees if you were blocking or otherwise walling, whereas we cannot cover all three entrances to the Avatars and no way to stop tree movement.




Well, Crow Spy, but that is limited more then watchers. Do I have to point out the amount of time it takes though to go from our territory entrance to our Aspects? If you have a single person with an eye and spy on, you can do what watchers do (with upkeep, yes), or one stealth user with awareness (yes, upkeep again), or one person having put up a hex, or even better several people having put up hexes and having different enemy list to cover a wide range and sense on, or even a druid with watch on would provide the same warning level, and warning goes farther because of the longer distances across enemy territory (and goodness knows what) that we would need to travel before being able to hit anything. Being warned by an SS watcher four seconds before you can hit the closest Aspect isn't enough to account for anything.

I'm not sure if game balance discussion is an appropriate 'idea'. Submit it to the admins for consideration if you feel this is necessary, but I don't think the ideas forum is for buffing/nerfing one thing or the other.

The forums in general have always been used in this way. And with effect. In fact Ethereal is a prime example of that

Another big difference, if not THE big difference is that due to the number of shrines there, your chance of having an order member who can call the powers is much higher compared to Glom



I dunno about that, power is nothing nowadays when nexii have millions of power each, and aspects come back on their own. Ladies/daughters do not.



No, it's only "easy" until you call shrines (just gravity, in fact), and we can't really go to the aspect area alone while we farm ladies because you can just kill the lone raider easily.



It's not a big deal though. You keep mentioning the best possible raid scenario by Glomdoring yet neglect to mention that the same setup can be done by Serenwilde + allies. You complain about us holing up 1n of the archway, guarding the aspects area and pulling ladies, but this exact same setup allows you to defend both provided you set up faster than Glomdoring, which you can, since you have spirits.



Stop downplaying pathtwist, its benefit is when you get to actually fighting the raiders are tumbling or walking around to get away. The very fact that you have to move to get anywhere means that you are more likely to trigger pathtwist than not.



Right, I said crow spy. I like that you mentioned all these methods which involve the owner having to camp ethereal for it to be any good, while SW's is just a set-and-forget skill. The owner can do whatever he wants yet still be as effective as someone living up on ethereal for hours on end. And no, it's not 4 seconds, you can call shrines in the 10s it takes to hit an aspect. Longer if the raider actually wants to kill it.

I won't deny that we have the better layout for the shrines, but how often do you actually see the shrine effects employed? I'm honestly curious now after the point just kept coming up here.