Sorry, I was vague about the eq stuff. I mean unmodifiable.

Is the concern still there?

Edit: I've added the cleanse related suggestion by Enyalida.

That fixes the eq problem yes.

I personally do not agree with the pointing cleanse change though. Yes I can see why it is wanted, but given that your entire group can focus on hindering the curing of sap, why is it then fair that the entire other group cannot help?

EX:
- Enyalida saps me
- Rivius pinlegs me
- Estwald uses hangedman
- My entire group cant do anything to help me even though I can be dog piled. People say its a low delay, I see a request to raise that, even if its not raised, shieldstun is still 3-4s of stun time.

Equally, how is it fair that in a group Sap (the central skill of druidry) is rendered totally useless, since a single balance from any teammate can end the effect?

POINT CLEANSE not working if the druid is in the room is pretty neat, I think. Requires a bit of coordination among teammates, one to gust, one to cleanse, at least.

Malarious:

That fixes the eq problem yes.

I personally do not agree with the pointing cleanse change though. Yes I can see why it is wanted, but given that your entire group can focus on hindering the curing of sap, why is it then fair that the entire other group cannot help?

EX:
- Enyalida saps me
- Rivius pinlegs me
- Estwald uses hangedman
- My entire group cant do anything to help me even though I can be dog piled. People say its a low delay, I see a request to raise that, even if its not raised, shieldstun is still 3-4s of stun time.

But if an entire group is focusing on preventing one person from curing sap, then how much are they focusing on the rest of your group who could be, as has been suggested, gusting you out of the room or say... gusting the druid out of your room?

Saran:


But if an entire group is focusing on preventing one person from curing sap, then how much are they focusing on the rest of your group who could be, as has been suggested, gusting you out of the room or say... gusting the druid out of your room?

If all of you focus on killing one person who is sapped and we focus on killing on of you who isnt, I bet the sapped guy dies first. Gusting alone wont do anything unless someone is aleady prepped to cleanse, how long does it take to return from being gusted? Instantly. Most groups are always focusing on one person to optimize their return on investment, the only variable we are changing is sap.

As it stands sap in even a small group is easily maintainable till a person dies if no one cleanses. Enyalida and Wobou alone can perma prone you and sap stops you from recovering. If you want any kind of cleanse immunity I would say no to increasing the delay, and maybe adjusting some of what stops it to TRY to limit the impact a group can have, and even then I think thats being generous. (I can see pinleg being the end of the world in sap).

Malarious:

I personally do not agree with the pointing cleanse change though. Yes I can see why it is wanted, but given that your entire group can focus on hindering the curing of sap, why is it then fair that the entire other group cannot help?

Cannot help? What? That is a ridiculous and honestly unfair way to phrase it.

Malarious:

If all of you focus on killing one person who is sapped and we focus on killing on of you who isnt, I bet the sapped guy dies first. Gusting alone wont do anything unless someone is aleady prepped to cleanse, how long does it take to return from being gusted? Instantly. Most groups are always focusing on one person to optimize their return on investment, the only variable we are changing is sap.

As it stands sap in even a small group is easily maintainable till a person dies if no one cleanses. Enyalida and Wobou alone can perma prone you and sap stops you from recovering. If you want any kind of cleanse immunity I would say no to increasing the delay, and maybe adjusting some of what stops it to TRY to limit the impact a group can have, and even then I think thats being generous. (I can see pinleg being the end of the world in sap).

Pinleg with most other major afflicts is the end of the world.

To me you just seem like you're insisting that curing Sap should be a pressure on the group, rather than any kind of responsibility for the Sapped person. With other afflictions that allies can counter, namely those that will fade on movement, at least there are counters to that with walls/monos and such. Choke, which I guess is the closest thing you can compare to Sap, they at least have a small time frame to follow even if the target does move. With Sap your only counter would be to also hinder every single ally as well.

Agreed. The situation ends up being "Unless the druid and their group can hinder absolutely everyone in the other group, sap is rendered useless". Looking at another skill that sees a lot of group help, choke, we see that the night user is also equipped with other skills to mitigate gust canceling their affliction. Things like bonds, summon resists from totems, and the 'grace period' during which they may chase the target.

In a large group, I expect sap to be countered by an ally most of the time, even with this sap change. The fact is that you can fairly easily hinder the druid and move a single other person, with a minimal amount of effort. Or, just move the druid and cleanse the target, again with a fairly minimal amount of effort. However, in smaller group situations, where there are less people available to do these things, sap will no longer be a useless strategy (though it would still be our ONLY strategy). I would like to promote small battling as much as possible, but as is, getting sap stuck on someone in a 2v2 to 4v4 situation is just not possible.

In your example you said

- My entire group cant do anything to help me even though I can be dog piled. People say its a low delay, I see a request to raise that, even if its not raised, shieldstun is still 3-4s of stun time.

But with this solution, that's just not true. Your team can gust you out of the room, which means that the druid's side will have to chase to maintain attacking, and if the druid is hindered (by a single person webbing), the victim is then open to POINT CLEANSE. Optionally, you may gust the druid out of the room and point cleanse right away. I'd like to note that druids have nothing on tree elevation that can stop you from gusting people!

To be honest, I'm actually rather confused by the argument that the group should be able to help a person when they are afflicted by something. I can't remember it being used before, nor can I immediately think of similar situations except for thornlashes.

- Thornlashes
- Choke
- Insta's
- Greenlocks
- Etc etc etc

I am just noting a response, not adding a suggstion right now. You are asking for lots of buffs to a skill that is borderline not working, not full of huge gaping holes.

Think I'm still going to keep the suggested changes as is, but I'd like more druid input!

In regards to the Thornlashes working along with Sap option, personally I'd prefer they be left exclusive from the buffed Sap, so that we might have more leeway in adjusting Thornlash to actually be a viable alternative to Sapping.

As for suggestions on Thornlash... I dunno, I've tried a couple ideas in past envoy reports that didn't really accomplish much. /shrug

Also I dunno if anybody discussed it before, but I think Darkseed and Scarab are both pretty lousy. While the effects are nice they're just not worth the power cost, but with just a lower power cost, would probably quickly become too good. Would be nice to be able to re-work them to be more useful, but that might be getting a bit outside the scope of this.

Would you prefer I drop the thornlash option then and instead go for the sap as eventual kill route? Or even just remove both options?

I think darkseed and scarab should be envoyed, but personally, they do seem a bit lackluster.

I'm still kind of undecided about the delayed kill one (though I do love preserved corpse part, should totally just get a second syntax that's just fossilize. 8D), but yeah I guess personally I would prefer having just that one. That's just me though.

I like Sap as kill, and I'm almost certain that a Druid who is focusing on keeping sap on you will generally be able to.

Thornlashes should probably be changed from Insta to heavy bleeding, and made harder to writhe from.

All right, I'll think about it. Leaning towards on making sap a kill. I'm not averse to lengthening the time to 30s too if it may be deemed too powerful.

If something with a difficult cure in groups becomes an insta I think you will largely see alot of shieldstun. Web alone will kill some people alone in sap. Shieldstun + web would basically guarantee a kill. 30s sounds better but I still think its likely to guarantee a kill with little effort. Suppose people can say "thats group!" but I think with a few seconds window you can web in solo and likely do the same. I remember seeing a fight where someone stayed sap for over a minute, the druid couldnt kill them in that time.

Its a good "cure" for those kinds of instances but how it would work overall I have no idea. If only we could get a touchup report after seeing how the changes work out.

Malarious:

If something with a difficult cure in groups becomes an insta I think you will largely see alot of shieldstun. Web alone will kill some people alone in sap. Shieldstun + web would basically guarantee a kill. 30s sounds better but I still think its likely to guarantee a kill with little effort. Suppose people can say "thats group!" but I think with a few seconds window you can web in solo and likely do the same. I remember seeing a fight where someone stayed sap for over a minute, the druid couldnt kill them in that time.

Its a good "cure" for those kinds of instances but how it would work overall I have no idea. If only we could get a touchup report after seeing how the changes work out.

That there is the problem. To keep sap on (against decent curing), you've got to spend all your time focusing on that and cannot kill. In a group situation, your group will be able to help you, by gusting you or the druid out and cleansing! 20seconds is probably too fast though.

I'll make it 30s then.


Druids:

-Reduce sap eq to 3s unmodifiable (currently 4s)
-Increase sap delay to .75-1s (currently .5s)
-Cause POINT CLEANSE (person) to fail on sapped victims if the druid who cast the sap is in the room (ground or tree elevation only).

Options (Pick one):

-allow thornlashes/thornrend to work on a sapped opponent once again
-have thornrend -not- instakill a sapped opponent, instead, have it cause a substantial amount of damage and bleeding (dependent on number of limbs lashed)
-disallow igniting lashes while you are sapped, i.e., you're too moist to be properly lit on fire

OR:

-Have sap kill you after 30s of not curing it, make it leave a cool corpse like with geomancy fossils (Shuyin's remains are here, preserved in hardened sap).

Thornrend already does good bleeding if you have less than 4 limbs lashed. How will this be improved on? 2x more bleeding... or?