I don't think this part gets stated enough imo. I remember when I first started playing, it WAS like this, and it was fun as hell even as a level 70 something, not even tri-trans. Sure a lot of times now raids/domoths/revolts/flares/etc are sorta 'lame' or 'one sided' but that's just how its become. It is sort of like Shuyin said, people go into something to pwn, not to be honorable and fair. I can't hate Celest or Glom for winning, they've perfected their stuff, and have had solid leaders that haven't changed to sort of make SURE they win.

As far as the whole "X griefin Y at Z time is lame and cowardly"... yeah well, every org is guilty of it(ok maybe not every org, Gaudi griefing would be the sign of some whacky paradox) and I don't think it will ever change. There are prominent members in each org that do it all the time, it would take a self-policing initiative that I don't think any of us would ever do honestly. End of the day, you play the conflict side of the game to 'win', no matter how that 'win' is achieved, or what that 'win' is. As Charlie Sheen would say... "winning!"

This is pretty much how everyone feels. The problem that leads to threads like this is that almost no one feels the other half: "I don't mind winning, as long as I'm given the chance to lose." That is, no one holds off starting a fight because they have almost no chance of losing it.

The responsibility for determining what kind of fight is going to happen pretty much always falls on the aggressor, because the aggressor is the one who chooses when and where the fight will be. As Shuyin said, people raid because they want to win, not because they want to fight. Thus, almost every fight is really about one side wanting to win with really no chance of losing, at the price of someone else who will later say "I don't mind losing, as long as I'm given the chance to win." Fights that aren't built from the first step on someone having that bad feeling are very rare.

Restraint is fragile because if 99 people show it and 1 person doesn't, it's almost as good as if 0 showed it and 100 didn't. So you can't count on restraint. Sometimes I wonder if it would be better if aggressors had no way to tell how much resistance they were going to meet, so they couldn't save their raids for times when they're all but guaranteed a win. But there's no way to make that work and it probably wouldn't help even if you could.

Yeah, I completely understand that Etherwilde doesn't have a lockdown distort and is a much more tempting target than Magnagora. Something like that just, well, it creates another sort of one-sided conflict. Is there a reason why the Elemental plane distorts are so much stronger/effective than the Ethereal ones (yet they cost the same amount of power to enact)? This is something that's always sort of bugged me.

Seren has recently started getting more defenders, yes. I still remember my novice days when I was one of the only people that showed up though, and we were in almost as bad a condition as Gaudiguch.

Seren doesn't have chainyank Maybe a bonecrusher buff could be, I hit you soooooo hard with my hammers, it sends you flying into the next room

But yank is for pulling people IN to your room. So it would have to be hammer-rang.

That would be awesome.

Random note: Bonecrusher is my favorite warrior spec. Haters gonna hate!!

Ooooh, it even has a nifty name! Hammer-rang away!

Eventru claimed that transversing through a plane that was distorted via a (permanent & created by the administration for the purpose of travelling reliably from plane to plane) rift was a "bug" and proceeded to have things "fixed"

In the end, distort on elemental and cosmic planes has been super buffed where traffic is one way, in but never out. Especially not with free nexus powers, but that is its own mistake and another topic.

Even if Seren and Glom distorts on Ethereal locked the entire plane, getting out of Etherwilde doesn't mean leaving the plane, just leaving part of it. If Celestia and Nil were on the same plane, it would be much the same.

This may be true, I don't look at demographics, but not entirely true. Sure you might have a smaller pool of people to draw from, but these people are actually around far more often. You do actually outnumber our combatants fairly often, and that's usually when we ask for help. There's little times here and there where we have skirmishes on faethorn and it seems more or less even, and then Celest or Mag comes in and makes it uneven. But from what I've seen, at least when I participate in these things, is that Celest+Glom usually bring the bigger numbers because we don't always have the our more experienced people around. So there really isn't some odd-defying superawesomeness going on here, it's really who has who at what time, and who decides to come in. That's what sort of annoyed me by your comment in the other thread because there seems to be a little bit too much tootin' of your own horn.
I'll readily admit that you guys have good organization, you know the game, your skills, the area and so on, but it gets a little annoying when you make it look like we lose all the time because we're entirely incompetent and not that there actually are instances where we really just don't have the people/resources to take you on.

As for Ethereal vs Elementals - I agree. As a person who's raided water twice or thrice it's always been a pain to get out, whereas at least in Glomdoring I've managed to either escape or just barely miss my chance out. In a way I wish we could distort our archways like the elementals can, but I never liked archway distortion in the first place.

Well, you'll have to admit that competence does play a factor, otherwise people wouldn't keep repeating the 'squall/gust/scissor/etc keep screwing our group up' so much when, aside from the adjacent room staredown, is easily cured by checking map then moving back.

True, but breaking up groups is an effective strategy, and I'm sure you'll agree otherwise, you wouldn't use it so much. It works well, and it disorients people, especially the ones who haven't really gotten used to these things and pay attention to move back in. It all points back to my resources thing, because you'll rarely find our better fighters being thrown off too much by that. I think what really becomes annoying about squall is that it 1) allows a main target to escape, so when we move back we need to reprioritize targets on the fly and 2)sometimes people upon getting separated end up getting end-gamed/killed by the opposing team. I think what Serenwilde needs most right now is to start really working with the newer people we have now and training them to more or less reach the level that our better combatants were at. I feel like there's a big disconnect there and a lot of things weren't really passed on, so we have to figure things out ourselves a lot of the time.

Yes, those are smaller factors and ones that we really can't complaint too much about. However, I will once again state choke is absolutely ridiculous in its ability to tilt the battle in Glom's favor (and its allies for that matter). It essentially requires its target to perform flawlessly in the situation to escape. On top of that, it allows your combat zergs to drop folks in a fraction of the time it would take otherwise. As much as folks will complain about this ability and that, choke is by and far the worse in terms of overwhelming combat.

Ultimately, it is a matter of number of capable combatants. You guys manage to gather up folks who generally know what they are doing and have the tools to win. Your organization is impressive and really should serve as a model to us Serens and others.

I will admit. You do not always lose because you are all incompetent. You sometimes lose because we zerg you. The other times you lose it's because you're all incompetent.

I've been in both, and trust me, Glomdoring was way more fun even when we were the underdog as compared to Gaudiguch.

For our side, we don't set up one target. Rather, we have a list, like, "Okay, Akyaevin first, Malarious, Lothringen, Asmodea, Rika, Tulemrah." or "Melder first, then monks, then bards." Then, during the rush fight itself, the leader calls out the targets (on clan, squad, etc.) to keep everyone in line. Sometimes it's disorienting because people manage to escape and we have to switch targets like mad, but most of the time it helps keep us focused.

Then again we all might just be mentally ill.

we don't actually even target at all. We just move as one collective hive mind. It's actually just shuyin controlling all of our attacks through triggers. That's why it's uber coordinated

I think you slightly misunderstood what I was getting at (or I didn't express myself right, kill me, I'm exhausted).

What I was saying is that there seems to be some embellishment going on in that post that made it seem as if we always outnumber you guys and we always lose regardless, but that's not how it is at all. And there was another part of his post where he said we had shinier skills, but that really lies on Mag and Halli, because we aint so shiny save for our bards

I disagree, choke, played in the right situation is downright deadly, as are numerous numerous numerous other skills. Choke played in the wrong situation will get you dropped faster than you can say 'oh man' In a straight up even fight when the numbers are even, it's pretty easy to turn the tide on the choker and drop them.

I also disagree with the numbers game. I definitely appreciate the compliment to our organization, but there's plenty of times Serenwilde fields plenty of capable combatants + there Mag ally helpers. Serenwilde likes to zerg a single person with a group of 5-6, then run like the dickens when 2 or 3 more gloms show up and then accuse us of increasing our numbers. In fact, I was fighting Iasmos and someone showed up, so I brought in Vadi and we were fighting 2v3 (I think is was Asmodea and Enyalida but don't quote me on that) and more people showed up so I brought a few celestians (it was still rather even, if anyone had more it was Serenwilde), and Iasmos immediately says to me ' when you fail once, have to bring in more people huh?' (not an exact quote but close). The thing is Serenwilde can hold their own, even without Mag. You have lots of people that just need some experiance and they'll be pretty good, Rivius, Enyalida, Eritheyl, Sondayga... combine those with the already experianced (Rika, Asmodea, Solanis, Lehki) and the somewhat experianced (Iasmos, Lilian) and you can field a pretty solid team, the biggest thing I've noticed from those of Serenwilde is the lack of willingness to try. They only want to try in overwhelming odds and you typically call in Mag incredibly quick, sometimes they show up before anyone from Serenwilde does. Calling in Mag prevents you from learning how to stand on your own feet.

I honestly think the biggest issue in Serenwilde is whiners, people who'd rather complain and whine than get better. I'm not trying to insult anyone, but I think that brings people down. I've stated it before, but there is an all too common occurence of people running to the forums to cry and complain about whatever killed them lately rather than give a legimate effort to correct any faults on their end. I think the reason why celest and glom and mag do so well is because they figure out how to counter stuff and improve. I think the biggest example of this is Invasion shrine powers ( People forget that Celest/Glom have had to deal with it from Mag way longer than they have and learned how to get around it, and I find it funny that Mags now think that 'it is detrimental to the games health' though to their credit I don't think said Mags were really around when Thoros was)




tl;dr

I think Choke isn't as big of a deal as people make it out to be and Serenwilde just needs to gain some experience and improve themselves and try and they'll soon be able to stand on their own

Not to say that it's consistently the case, but I thought it was amusing given that you just posted this a few hours ago.

Oh sweet a choke rant. Been a while since we had one. I kind of missed it. All I'm saying there is that the 1.5s you need to leave make it pretty possible to cure now, especially in groups.

But yeah, it's pretty much all about practice and having a solid plan in mind.

More pinleg complaints, please! I don't have access to choke, so I am feeling largely left out here.