Raeri:

For me, it's not so much the spare essence, as the largeish weights attached to these :(

Time to bash bash BAAAAASH.

To the Dragons!

*goes and buys every Demigod power, drops five rankings*

I dropped over 50 ranks, but I do like the new powers!

It beats me why the druid changes came up.
Druids have a very nice meld for group combat.

Solo, druid combat looks like this:

If a dreamweaver, get them to max sleepiness, run or hinder while regaining power. If not, proceed below.

Strip protection, get them into the trees, time sap with demesne effects/possible additional passives. Throw everything at them, hoping they cannot cure out of sap and will die.

If they cure out, hinder or run again until you get power and repeat.

Note that the druid doesn't actually fight unless they have the target sapped, they just prevent any building of an offense of their opponent. Once sapped, they have to stay in the room - but the target cannot feasibly fight back at that point until out of sap - and then the druid just hinders or runs again. This makes fighting druids solo a pretty much hopeless task, unless you manage to lock down the druid in their own demesne - which is simply impossible for most classes.

Thus, I don't think druids really deserve an easier time to sap and keep sap on the target. Since they have that now, you might also want sap to require certain conditions aside from tree elevation, so that there is an actual fight (and not just evading/hindering) BEFORE the target is sapped.

You're wrong. Just gonna leave it at that.

The new changes may indeed need toning down, but we'll see after everyone's systems have caught up. Expressed concerns have been speed of allergies accrual and too severe of effects. I have plans to address the first if need be, and the second is easy enough to adjust.

Am I the only person that read the sap change as "Sap no longer produces an aeon-like effect, now it does 1s to 2.5s of balance loss on a 3s equilibrium." ?

Greleag:

Am I the only person that read the sap change as "Sap no longer produces an aeon-like effect, now it does 1s to 2.5s of balance loss on a 3s equilibrium." ?

It's my understanding that it takes balance when it is first applied, so that you cannot instantly scrub/cleanse it away.

Hehe, that does look like what it reads like! No, the eq time on sap was just sped up.

I'm a fan of the changes, in that it makes sap less of a total crap-shoot based solely around the opponent's system strength and bugginess, less of a fan in that it continues dependance on a tricky sap mechanic. At this point, if you are at incapacitating levels of allergies, there is a good chance that a decent druid who is doing nothing but trying to hinder you will succeed at doing so, and that their demesne will slowly (slowly) bleed you out.

In groups, druids just became VASTLY stronger, but remember that POINT CLEANSE AT still functions! Outside of that, druids classically have only had a single thing going for them, treelife. This allergies change has finally given something for a druid to do when sap is either impossible or highly impractical, besides the spamming of damage or tertiary attacks.

In a minute, I'll post up what allergies does/how it works, and where changes could be made to tone it down/make it more interesting.

So basically, the druid will now rather choose to spam shieldstun or web instead of running, since they need the allergy levels. And once they have the desired incapacitating allergy level on the target, they sap and then... spam more shieldstun and web until the target dies. Hardly sounds like an improvement to me, really.

General notes:

- All of the allergy inducing attacks accrue 'allergy levels' which range from 1-15. You do not ever get to see this number.
- This allergy counter determines if you have mild, serious, severe, or incapacitating allergies. Some effects require a particular aff level, but many of the effects go directly off the counter.
-Allergies decay at 1 level per 10 seconds in the presence of the druid (in their room and on their elevation), 5 seconds away from the druid. Outside of a forest terrain and away from the druid, all levels vanish after 10 seconds. You sneeze every time a level drops and are alerted when your allergies clear.

Allergy effects:
- As indicated, more allergies means less poison shrugging and an increasing chance to fail CLIMB UP/CLIMB DOWN.
-Allergies also increase both sap delay and writhe times. Sap delay goes up by ~.03 seconds per allergen level. Writhe time is .07 I think.. I'll look it up in a minute.
-Having any aff level over mild allows intoxicating flower to be used on you. IFlower is a one-time, active ability that costs 3p to instantly summon an allergy-afflicted person to the location of the druid, provided that both the target and the druid are within the druid's demesne. It consumes 2-3 levels of allergies, but throws the target off-balance dependant on the strength of their allergies before the consumption of levels.Can be resisted with summon resist, still costing the druid the power, but not consuming allergy levels.

Allergies are stacked in one of two ways: Actively or passively
-The active ability seedcloud costs 1p and has normal balance times (~3.5 seconds). On the ground, it always does 1 level of allergies. In the trees, it always does 2 levels with a 50% chance to hit for 3.
-The passives ONLY stack on people who already have some allergies. Because of the way allergies decay (worldtimer), one seedcloud does not always guarantee the starting of passive build up.
- Both swarm (not protection blocked) and pollen (protection blocked, hits before treelife) raise allergy levels by 1 when they hit. When on the tree terrain, there is a 50% chance for each to do a second level of allergies.


So, on the ground, assuming that you have protection up, the passives will only hold you steady at your allergy level if the druid is in the room. It's safe to assume you won't have protection scroll up, so it'll slowly gain up levels, as the default state is pollen hitting (for 1), you decaying 1 to cancel that, treelife raising you into the trees, swarm hitting for 1-2 raising you by that amount. After enough allerges are on you, it's likely you won't be trying to climb down, and will be raised 1-3 levels every 10 seconds from the passives.

If this progression turns out to be too fast, I think that the active ability (seedcloud) should always have a base of 1, with a 50% chance to do 2 (down from 2/3) in the trees. Then, remove the double hitting power of swarm, so that the passives are slowed as well. However, I'm thinking that it would be more interesting to possibly weaken the effects of allergies down the road and introduce more active effects/powers that consume the levels to do various things.

EDIT: It's an improvement over being either: Completely nullified by a trigger that automatically point cleanses an ally OR unable to kill solo in the majority of tertiaries without abusing system bugs (which luckily have been prevalent, but are on the downturn). I really have no sympathy while TK is how it is, or for complaints that this is a shield/shieldstun strategy, when there are other guilds who are balanced around that idea.

EDIT: Another concern that was expressed is the lengthening of writhe times across the board. While I think it'd be nice to have this sort of synergy with other guilds, it may be problematic to make things like pinleg or crucify harder to writhe off of with this mechanic. Perhaps not so simple of a fix, but the best way I can see to solve that issue would be to somehow differentiate the entangles that druids can do naturally from web/other impales and make it so that only the writhe time of vines is increased. It'd have to be done in a way that makes it so that web and vines don't stack, I think, but may be possible. Keep in mind that vines is EXACTLY like web.... except that it's limited to forest terrain ONLY.

Veyrzhul:

So basically, the druid will now rather choose to spam shieldstun or web instead of running, since they need the allergy levels. And once they have the desired incapacitating allergy level on the target, they sap and then... spam more shieldstun and web until the target dies. Hardly sounds like an improvement to me, really.

It sounds like you're taking it as an assumption that the opponent is going to be there constantly trying to attack the druid, since before now why wouldn't you, and obviously it was just fine that 1v1 a druid couldn't do anything at all until after Sap was on? The opponent should probably now be taking into consideration whether or not they want to stay in the druid's demesne any longer.

Somewhat comparable to phantomsphere's in a mages demesne, in that it's a building mechanic that you want to gtfo before it reaches max. Though ours is I faster and half passive, but not a guaranteed kill.

Most classes NEED to be there constantly and attack, or they're not getting anywhere offensively. So yes, I'm going to assume that. That druids need sap to kill doesn't really hurt them much, except for the fact that they need forest terrain. However, the adjusted mechanics for sap and their demesne don't change that part.

I personally think that working on the tertiaries would have been a better idea, but can't come up with a good idea for that adhoc.

I like your comparison with phantomspheres, since they're a likewise annoying feature (ranged and uncurable except by running).

The opponent should probably now be taking into consideration whether or not they want to stay in the druid's demesne any longer.

So basically, any melder should be invincible inside their demesne unless outnumbered or killed within seconds? That makes little sense to me and is hardly fun.

EDIT to comment on Enyalida:

I really have no sympathy while TK is how it is, or for complaints that this is a shield/shieldstun strategy, when there are other guilds who are balanced around that idea.

Tk is powerful, but at least allows you to fight back properly while the tk keeps up an offense.
What guilds are balanced around shieldstunning/shielding? And even if there are any, why do you think this is a good idea to transfer to other guilds? It is utterly boring for the person fighting you, I can assure you, and not anything that should serve as an example.

I was writing another response, but forget it. I disagree with your view of the druid class, and you're way late to the discussion on this which was like 2 months ago or something.

We'll see how allergies works out now, and then adjustments will probably get made to it.

Agree with Lehki.

As it was, you could essentially ignore a druid unless they were really bringing a lot of heat and going crazy on you (or you had a buggy system, which is a lot of people). Even then, the methods to ignore a druid were plenty! Because druids are absolutly and completly tied to their demesne for viability I say yeah: If you are standing in a demesne, in the room with the melder, and not hindering them, you should be worried. You should not be sitting around in a meld doing nothing. If you are furthering your offense, you're stopping the druid from building up. It may be an issue that the druid's buildup is too fast now, but as I said: That's really easy to fix, and there are already plans in place to do so from the player end if it turns out it's needed.

I'm going to avoid touching your other 'points' for a reason.

EDIT: Also, I'd like to point out that the reason you'd see druids spamming shields/stuns is because they had nothing else to do and were waiting on power to come back. You don't see bards or other classes doing this, because they can be doing something productive instead! Moving away from druids constantly waiting on power for a sap-combo , usually because you simply cured out of the first one. Check how many things druids have that passively stops cleansing, you'll find it's 1, 2 if really lucky. This change is a move to make druids have more of a buildup instead of a sudden do-or-don't situation. I wouldn't be surprised if changes go through to move away from absolute sap reliance with this new mechanic introduced. I know it's what I want to do.

You don't see bards or other classes doing this, because they can be doing something productive instead

They can, but, more importantly, they have to. There are other burst offense classes, mostly Nihilists come to mind here, who have no choice but to wait for power after someone writhed off a cross, for instance. But even they need to properly prepare a crucifixion, all the work is pretty much done aforehand and it does not just consist of shieldstunning, nor can rely on that once the cross is up.

Because druids are absolutly and completly tied to their demesne for viability

This hasn't changed a bit. And if you demand that they be op in their demesne because of that, then I can only disagree.

I'm in agreement with Veyrzhul here. None of the problems with druids were fixed by this report, and I still get out of sap just fine against runes and shamanism (dreamweavers never had a problem sticking sap, even if they had to rely on sleep attrition or drunkeness plus a sprinkling of memoryloss here and there). And that was with pretty substantial curing errors.

The truth is, druidry needs a good new central mechanic to work around, with sap as an ender, rather than the start. It shouldn't be that you sap someone and race against their curing, but rather more like other classes, where you'd essentially prep them first and then sap to seal the deal.

I recognize this is useless coming from me, especially this late, but I hadn't had as good a grasp on curing theory and how to deal with druids during the time of the special report and mostly stood out of it. But I think to solve the problems stated in the report, that was the sort of thinking we'd need to go for.

I also understand the comparison Veyrzhul made with TK. While I might be one of those people who thinks psionic mages are over-the-top, fighting a druid is difficult for classes like bards, warriors and monks who need to constantly keep pressure on their opponent and can't afford to leave the room if they want to kill you. Burst offense classes might be able to do it, though.

Either way, the changes help, just not enough and really just made group combat a tad more painful.

I'm also a bit wary of intoxicatingflower, even if it requires max allergies.

I have likened the new sap to choke. I will say no more.

C'mon now. During the early stages of the reports, the druid report practically begged for people to come in and add their thoughts to it. There were just a small handful of people even paying attention to it. Therefore this is what we get. And even then, it sets the stage for further changes since this is something new that has to be balanced.

Part of the plan was reliant on sap being changed from an aeon-like effect to a writhe stack effect.

Since that wasn't approved, we were left with what we have now.

As to how effective or broken or whatever it is, we can't really tell yet, so we'll see.

In short, basically what the post above this says. Where were these comments during the special report creation, etc etc.