I don't get why people say it's too late to change anything. It never is. It is also not valid to say that we got what we wanted and cannot complain now; Shuyin posted above what he submitted in comparison to what was implemented.

This is an envoy report thread, and I believe it is fairly reasonable to use it to comment on envoy report outcomes. Whether the points brought up here will change anything - who knows. But please stop clogging it with remarks on how everyone was silent when the special report was brought up, because THAT really contributes nothing at all.

EDIT in response to Malarious:

Druids are meld based, they get meld based love even if some of it was a bit excessive.

Not only is that not written in stone, many people (druids particularly) seem to want to move away from that.

Okay well. If anyone wants into "Something Druidish" to hash out stuff in a more chatty format, feel free to ask for entrance. I had a bunch of plans for it, but they kinda fell apart as RL and IG stuff happened.

It is too late to complain. Far too late. If you want things to change, you make an accurate interpretation of what you currently have, as offered and subsequently ignored here

Enyalida:

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.

Grand sweeping statements like

It beats me why the druid changes came up.

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

Add nothing to the discussion, and are frankly an insult to those who worked on the report before it went through. Where were these statements when the matter came up to reviewing? The special report was the admin giving the playerbase an opportunity to brush up on druidry, but it was also a responsibility. If this was such a huge problem, then those problems should've been brought to light way earlier.

As it is now, the complaints lack credibility.

Veyrzhul:
But please stop clogging it with remarks on how everyone was silent when the special report was brought up, because THAT really contributes nothing at all.

Nobody has really contributed anything meaningful about the changes beyond they don't like them or they don't think they were necessary.

Kiradawea:

Grand sweeping statements like

It is too late to complain. Far too late.

add nothing to the discussion, and are frankly

out of place, considering this is a thread to respond to envoy reports. This is exactly the place to state whether you like them or not and for what reasons, even if you cannot make a suggestion to improve things.

Lehki:
Rivius and I not only stated that we don't like the state of things, we also explained why.

Well, you guys didn't really make any other suggestions either, heh.

As it is, I think people appreciate people with ideas that may give direction other than just "criticism".

I think that's the main point of complaining about the complaints: if you're going to level "criticism" at ideas implemented, you should be more than willing to throw your own ideas into the ring. Doing just the former comes off as a bit too negative.

P.S. Druids and melds are more or less set in stone, unfortunately. It was repeatedly brought up on the envoys channel and personal talks about druids being tied to the meld. Suffice to say, the idea has always been 'crazy in forests, meh outside of it'.

Now, Rivius and I mentioned already that sap should be more of a finisher. It should be worked towards, not thrown in and then be worked from. So with the assumption that it is now only useful due to allergies (at least solo, although Rivius already said that this is not the case - could require some tweaking), we could say that the buildup towards sapping consists in building allergy levels.

My suggestion is, make building allergy levels possible, but challenging. I'd recommend lowering the passive contribution of the meld to them, possibly completely. That way, we can avoid the shieldstun/entangle spam as a valid tactic and the druid actually has to use the active skills most or all of the time to increase allergy levels.
That means that seedcloud will have to be a bit more powerful (more allergy levels).

Maybe also provide a version of seedcloud that costs one power and works outside of forest. So far, this would only be useful to increase writhing times. The effect of allergies could be extended to higher mana cost/drain, reduced sipping, higher equilibrium recovery times (not balance, unless the balance loss effect of sap and failing climbs gets adjusted), failure to consume herbs, to throw in a few suggestions that would make the effect useful outside of a demesne.

--------------------------------------
EDIT:

Something to work towards:

Outside of forest, the effects of allergy levels (mainly actively built, please) should enable a druid to function well enough to greatly facilitate the use of tertiaries to kill people. That means, with the help of a second person, they could pull it off. For that to work, ecology would need a kill method of some kind.

In forest, the addition of sap and vines/thornlashes should provide a feasible way of pulling off tertiary-based kills or thornrend kills.

In the demesne, the effects should complement this -slightly- to make it not too overpowering.

So what we need is:
- a valid kill method for all tertiaries (runes and shamanism have one, how feasible it is, I cannot really judge, but I have never seen either happen, so they're probably close to impossible)
- seedcloud needs to work outside of forest
- an adjustment of allergy effects to facilitate all of those kill methods in a way sufficient to at least barely pull them off, even outside of forest/without sap
- an adjustment of sap so that despite the above, it doesn't become overpowering (Shuyin's suggestion for the report comes to mind, in any case removing the aeon effect)
- an adjustment of the demesne effects to further complement the paths towards killing, but not make them too easy

Whoa.

The idea for this change was to:

1. Remove the reliance on sap being the only way that a druid could build up to a kill. I'm not convinced that this has been achieved, but both sides - Hartstone and Blacktalon - are committed to finding a medium that isn't game-breaking. The change was just implemented, give us time to properly test it, and for you to see how it affects the game.
   
2. Allow non-meld-holding druids contribute with their primary, since we're meant to work in groups. Prior to the change, each side had its 'champion' (Enyalida + Vadi) and everyone else was restricted to tertiaries or secondaries, as there were few active skills in the primary to work towards a primary skill kill. Thornrending was not viable, as explained below.
   
3. Allow thornrending to be a viable kill method. Ignite was changed, sap was changed, and a focus on writhing was implemented. The number of lashed limbs was raised to bring it in line with bursting vessels. This is now our main kill method, as was always intended. The allergy effects will likely need to be reviewed to see whether they are too much or need a different approach.
   
4. Make druids stronger in their meld and less effective outside of it, in the same line as Kiakoda. Mages were intended to be self-sufficient without the meld. While not 'written in stone', this focus has been voiced by admin, backed by lore, and is strongly supported by many druids. I'm not sure where "many people (druids particularly) seem to want to move away from that" has come from. We're happy to be weak outside, so long as we're strong(er than mages are) inside, as intended.
   

I disagree with Veyrzhul's suggestion that the druid skills should be changed so that they are viable outside of the meld. We are not mages, this is the whole intent of the special report.


If the effect of the special report makes it so that we're too strong, well, bring on the nerfs. Both sides are committed to envoying the skills to ensure the intent of druid combat is reached.

tl;dr: calm down and let's see how this goes.

I agree in general with Svorai, but want to elaborate on a few points.

On 3, this change won't really make thornlash a viable kill method at its core. What it has actually done is make thornlash viable in sap. That appears to be making thornlash our main kill, but is actually making POINT CUDGEL our main kill method! If anyone is sapped long enough for thornlash kill, they are sapped long enough for damage kill! You've got the idea for the change right, but I disagree with this bit: "This is now our main kill method, as was always intended".

As for point 4. This is really the crux of the 'issue'. No matter how strong druids are inside a demesne, mages can break a druid's demesne just as easily as a druid can break a mage's demesne. That means that however much the druidmense > magemense, it will have an equal chance of coming into play, and when it falls on nodruidmense as opposed to nomagemense, it hurts druids way more. See what I mean? Really, what we 'need' is to be stronger in demense as well as stronger at demesne. Unfortunatly, that could do nasty things to balance.

EDIT: Pardon me if my... syntax is a bit loose at the moment. I'm distracted and writing how I speak, which is much easier to understand when I'm speaking.

Enyalida:

Comments re point 3 and 4.

I agree with your point about thornrending, Enyalida. But thornrend was the intended kill method (see quotes below, and further, we all nutted that out in the feedback thread) -- I just don't believe the sap change has had the effect it was meant to. It seems that we are still relying on a balance loss/aeonysortof effect (though I haven't even been able to long in long enough to test for myself yet!), instead of sap being changed to something completely different to support thornrending.

About point 4 -- I don't know. A good melder is a good melder. If you have people to support you, this is everyone's bane. If you can't meld and maintain a meld solidly, that's your own problem. As for melding faster... eh. Not necessary. Just do a good job yourself, and ensure your back up knows what to do when everything starts being broken.

I like the idea of having an area that people think twice about entering.

Estarra the Eternal says, "I also don't like the idea of making sap the focus of druid combat."
You say, "Would it be fine then to focus on thornrend instead?"
Estarra the Eternal says, "Sure."
You say, "Here's the other idea for thornrend."
You say, "-allow thornlashes/thornrend to work on a sapped opponent once again."
You say, "Have thornrend -not- instakill a sapped opponent, instead, have it cause a substantial amount of damage and bleeding (dependent on number of limbs lashed)"
You say, "-disallow igniting lashes while you are sapped, i.e., you're too moist to be properly lit on fire."
Estarra the Eternal says, "So we're making thornrend/sap the druid main ability again."
You say, "The main kill method there yes, since sap alone isn't the plan."

Anyway, just an idea thrown out to build upon (or not). It may (or may not) require tweaking sap or thornrend (or removing one or both), but the point is that we are open to new strategies for druids that don't require a complete rewrite of druidry (as some have suggested).

Druids have been crying for viability outside of forest for quite a while, I didn't make that up. If you all suddenly agree that you don't want it, all the better.

1. Removing the reliance on sap pretty much implies removing sap as it is, as well. The skill is powerful, and if a druid can kill someone without it, sap would be complete overkill. However, the change buffed sap (in its aeon-like form), too, so I'm not sure the road away from sap reliance is the one being taken.

2. That only one melder of any side can actually hold a meld is nothing druid specific. Mages will mostly use their tertiaries in groups, too, not their primaries.

We are not mages, this is the whole intent of the special report.

Quoted from the special report thread, page 1:

Problem:
Druids are not as viable as mages when fighting outside their meld and rely too much on sap, an affliction that swings from overpowered to not that great.

Shuyin probably didn't make that up, either.

The 'Let's see how it goes' approach doesn't make much sense when the actual nature of druid combat hasn't changed (mainly because sap remained as it was - an aeon effect). They got buffed, that is all, and unnecessarily so.

Yes, Veryzhul. Shuyin probably did say that.

The two problems were, as quoted there:

• Druids relied too heavily on sap. Sap was the only way to work towards a kill, and as mentioned, I'm not convinced that the intended change has been achieved - yet. Allergies have added in another work-towards-a-kill method, but I'm still wary about the implemented sap change. I mentioned that.
  
• Druids are not as viable as mages when fighting outside their meld. After this was said, Druids gained Shamanism. It was a skillset that, like the other three, was not outside-of-meld viable (and had other restrictions placed on it that emphasised its non-natural environment inviability), and so it was cemented that druids were intended to be stronger within their melds (all foresty and natural), and mages stronger than druids outside their melds.
  

Remember that this was some time ago (the inital brainstorming, that is - October, September last year?), and many arguments have been made since then.

To answer another of your comments - I know melding is not unique to druids. That's not what I meant. The foresty part of druid combat is solidly stuck in our primary, and it is in this primary where we were intended to be strongest. All parties agreed, during the feedback session of the druid special report, that if meld/forest/stuff is meant to be our focus, then our primary needed to be looked at to ensure the four points I mentioned above were addressed. Read the thread! I'm not kidding :)

So much editing, sorry. My brain is slow today!

I think it's important to just let this simmer for a little while. It's not game-breaking yet --- I haven't even set up my aliases (teehee, because I'm all scary 'n' stuff - when I do, watch out! XD) and I'm sure the various combat systems are still being updated --- and if proves to be game-breaking, as mentioned, both sides are willing to nerf it to what the change was intended to be.

I don't know how much I like these changes, I hope at the least we get some more druids around. But I kinda expect that I'm going to remain in my state of... I really, really love the Hartstone and have little to no interest in another guild... but gods... if this was any of the other games, I would be any other class so fast and really unlikely to be changing back to druid often/ever.

Enyalida:

As for point 4. This is really the crux of the 'issue'. No matter how strong druids are inside a demesne, mages can break a druid's demesne just as easily as a druid can break a mage's demesne.

This is entirely untrue, actually. Druids always have an advantage to melding over a mage as druids are able to meld over saplings and incur no penalty if that sapling is aligned to their particular org. In addition, druids are able to meld from at least two elevations where most mages (barring aeromancer) can only meld from one.

Nydekion:


This is entirely untrue, actually. Druids always have an advantage to melding over a mage as druids are able to meld over saplings and incur no penalty if that sapling is aligned to their particular org. In addition, druids are able to meld from at least two elevations where most mages (barring aeromancer) can only meld from one.

It's true that we can meld over aligned saplings (so long as they are on the appropriate melding terrain - wyrden, for example - and not truegrounded terrain), but... mages can meld over territory that is aligned to their org too... so... oh. You must have meant that we can get up an extra defense beforehand if it's already there? That's true enough. Few places that's going to be set up beforehand, though. Saplings only live in natural forest environments.

We can meld from two elevations. And we can get our mage friends to illusion over our terrain. Mages can't get us to sapling for them.

So really, we are 'better' at melding than mages!

Druids being able to meld over saplings where mages can't meld over terrain is an advantage in contested areas. For a druid, the order in a contested melding fight goes Forcecast Terrain -> Sapling -> Meld -> Fight, where for a mage the order goes Forcecast Terrain -> Illusion -> Gust Enemy -> Dispell Illusion -> Meld -> Re-Illusion -> Fight.

Rainydays:

Make sure mages get a similar treatment. No, "but they have TK" is not an argument against this. I'm sure, for random example, aquas would love to be able to work towards a preserve kill more effectively.

I really would :(

Rivius:

As for aquas and preserve kills, that isn't even their main kill method, and mages have lots. Druids literally have about one and it's gimpy.

Mages at best have maybe 1 more kill method than druids from what I know, can't recall all the druid kills. Preserve isn't my main kill method, but that doesn't change the fact that even if I wanted to try and use it, it's practically impossible on anyone paying attention.

Malarious:


I think TK and TP (for aeros) is a great reason not to touch anything at all actually.

Preserve is FINE, and several generations of mage have yet to get it to work as well as Narsrim could, learn to use it, stop random buffing. Read the reports first, it is almost bordering on being a joke.

#13 c Skill: Aquamancy - Preserve G: Aquamancers (0)
#126 c+ Skill: Aquamancy - Preserve G: Aquamancers (10)
#294 c+ Skill: Aquamancy - Preserve G: Aquamancers (16)
#389 c+ Skill: Aquamancy - Preserve G: Aquamancers (1)
#750 c+ Skill: Aquamancy - Preserve G: Aquamancers (5)


Disagree entirely. The last Preserve report was meant to make it less punishing on an Aquamancer if they attempted a Preserve kill, but there's still no way to properly work towards a preserve state effectively.

Greleag:

Druids being able to meld over saplings where mages can't meld over terrain is an advantage in contested areas. For a druid, the order in a contested melding fight goes Forcecast Terrain -> Sapling -> Meld -> Fight, where for a mage the order goes Forcecast Terrain -> Illusion -> Gust Enemy -> Dispell Illusion -> Meld -> Re-Illusion -> Fight.

Add in Deluge for Aquas :(

Svorai:

It's true that we can meld over aligned saplings (so long as they are on the appropriate melding terrain - wyrden, for example - and not truegrounded terrain), but... mages can meld over territory that is aligned to their org too... so... oh. You must have meant that we can get up an extra defense beforehand if it's already there? That's true enough. Few places that's going to be set up beforehand, though. Saplings only live in natural forest environments.

Heh, if you think this isn't a huge advantage, support letting mages be able to meld over areas that have the appropriate terrain and illusioned. Unless you're entirely outclassed, even an extra second or so advantage in melding speed faster than the opposition often lets you win the area when extending and maintaining a meld.

In any case, it does seem like the druid changes in this round were too heavy-handed for an archetype that was already quite viable in their original sense. It is unfortunate that many of the folks that were more combat-saavy were not active when the report initially was sent to add their comments to modify it appropriately.

To that end, intoxicating flower should be removed as a skill. Demesne summon-like abilities were removed originally from all melders for good reason, it would be a mistake to reintroduce it back into the game in any form.

Throwing down a sapling before melding moves the 'mensewar' from terrain/terrain to sapling/chopsapling. Doesn't solve anything, and is only a home-field advantage, one that is usually nullified by geography.

Greleag:

Druids being able to meld over saplings where mages can't meld over terrain is an advantage in contested areas. For a druid, the order in a contested melding fight goes Forcecast Terrain -> Sapling -> Meld -> Fight, where for a mage the order goes Forcecast Terrain -> Illusion -> Gust Enemy -> Dispell Illusion -> Meld -> Re-Illusion -> Fight.

We also have to dispel illusions if they are set up, so there is no difference with contested areas.

If the terrain is neutral (three steps): forestcast forest --> meld --> sapling --> fight
If the terrain is opposite forested (four steps): mulch sapling --> break/infest/purify --> meld --> sapling --> fight
If the terrain is opposite forested and illusioned (five steps): realitycheck --> mulch sapling --> break/infest/purify --> meld --> sapling --> fight
If the terrain is maged (four steps): realitycheck --> break/infest/purify --> meld --> sapling --> fight

For mages, this is very similar. The only advantages druids have over most mages is that 1) we can have a friendly mage add another protection to our meld, being illusioned terrain (in addition to saplings), and 2) we can meld on two elevations, if the terrain below is suitable to meld on (which, means basically Faethorn and Seren vs Glom fights).

Iytha, why you're adding in bombastic steps like gusting an enemy is not helpful to constructive discussion.

Nydekion, I understand that mages have to dispel/realitycheck illusioned terrain, even if the terrain is your type (watery, for example). Saplings and illusioned terrain work differently, though - one can be added after the meld is down, the other can be done before or after. The meld is the important part, and these elements are just protective layers.

It is great to be able to meld over saplings aligned to your org, yes, but remember that saplings don't last on non-natural terrain, so... if we're fighting on anywhere other than Faethorn (which is the only natural forest area that we fight in), this is not going to be something that gives us a big advantage, because the saplings just won't be there beforehand. We can have our guildmates run around and plant saplings while we meld, but you can also have your guildmates run around and cast illusionary terrain while you meld, too.

Have I misunderstood the argument here? Admittedly, I haven't played as anything but a druid in this game, but as far as melding speed goes, the only advantages I understand druids to have are those I've given, and they have the restrictions of having a friendly mage handy and having the appropriate terrain already down.