Back in the good old days, Fury killed everyone in your demesne including you and broke your cudgel so you had to summon a new one. Yes, I'm afraid I have no actually useful comments about druid combat. I will go back to my trueheart-boosted influencing.

Sojiro:

Are we just going by Estarra's idea here, or is anyone actually writing something up?

I mean, I guess I can churn something out too, but honestly, the choke thread tired me out when it comes to brainstorming.

I think we're all a bit burned out. Just allergies as stated by Estarra... no, if it is entirely shared by both guilds it will likely be a let down.

Other thoughts that I remember from recent things are the idea of the hartstone raising stones within their demesne, though this is thematic rather than anything mechanical.

At the moment I have seen two things that have been stated as needs:

• Ability to slow curing
  
• Ability to hinder escape
  

For the Hartstone the immediate skill that comes to mind for the second is Pathtwist, I cannot remember how often it was used in its earlier incarnation or the reasons for it changing (attempts to leave the demesne had a chance to throw you back inside) but it would seem to fit the bill.

Maybe some tweaks to extant abilities and some ability to summon a ring of stones. I am a bit iffy on using them though, it could be really awesome or flop. I could see it or something similar being the focus either as something at the demesne centre or perhaps spread out though the issue is right now I keep coming back to rousing spirits and that verges on SS territory. :/

Pathtwist would really need an overhaul to be useful, imo. And if it's intended to fix a major problem that crops up, it'd be needed for both BT and HS (which I'm totally okay with) and we'd need a replacement skill (which I'm also okay with).

Enyalida:

Pathtwist would really need an overhaul to be useful, imo. And if it's intended to fix a major problem that crops up, it'd be needed for both BT and HS (which I'm totally okay with) and we'd need a replacement skill (which I'm also okay with).

I'm not actually saying give it to both, I'm saying make some changes to Stag druidry and then some separate changes to Crow druidry to increase the division between both, then pathtwist might interact with these changes to become effective.

Not sure why we're not generating more ideas. Just for the sake of brainstorming:

Intoxicating Flower - Druid can grow flower in one meld location (can only have one), sprays enemies with pollen (making them sneeze and lose eq), randomly selects one enemy per pollen release, pollen stays on enemy for 5 minutes (refreshed if sprayed anew). Druid can summon pollinated enemy back to flower if enemy is in demesne (no save) for 3p. Druid can sense all pollinated enemies in demesne.

Herb Curse - Druid can spit an herb at a target, does very short blackout and random affliction for 3p. For 5 minutes, any time target eats the herb that was spit, has an allergic reaction (combined with allergy?), chance of herb not working. Can only be susceptible to one herb at a time, another spit with another herb overrides previous spit (if same herb, refreshes timer).

Poison Ivy - Druid can grow patch in in one meld location (can only have one). Enemies that enter/exit that location suffer poison damage and have chance to pass out when leaving the location.

Fungal Breath - Druid breathes fungal cloud at target, which disorients target, making it difficult to leave the room and increases herbal balance. Works with allergy?

I'm having computer and other RL issues, which is why I'm not doing much besides random comments.

Also, I'm confused.. Are we looking at adding in several new skills? Or just replacing the sap mechanic? Or adding one new skill to support sap as is (after the already agreed upon changes?)? Or possibly changing the way a lot of the mechanics work? I was under the impression that the topic of brainstorming was: "How can we totally replace sap without changing anything else in the archetype" which is a much harder issue. I've got a base concept for it, but am not sure where to start with balancing it, and the above RL problems (like my computer having 30mins left of charge for the foreseeable future) mean that I probably won't be contributing as much as I'd like.

I like a lot of the suggestions, but I'm still not sure what we're trying to accomplish here.

Estarra:

Herb Curse - Druid can spit an herb at a target, does very short blackout and random affliction for 3p. For 5 minutes, any time target eats the herb that was spit, has an allergic reaction (combined with allergy?), chance of herb not working. Can only be susceptible to one herb at a time, another spit with another herb overrides previous spit (if same herb, refreshes timer).

Fungal Breath - Druid breathes fungal cloud at target, which disorients target, making it difficult to leave the room and increases herbal balance. Works with allergy?

These sound interesting, but I still don't like the idea of yet another thing that is shared by both guilds. I would love to see the result of this being something that screams "I'm a Hartstone" and something else that screams "I'm a Blacktalon"

Would you be opposed to distinct yet mechanically similar solutions for each guild?

I'm not fond of identical skills that just are 'skinned' thematically. Spells that look different should do different things. While I'm not opposed to some spells being different (bees/spiders, etc.), I don't think we should get sidetracked into trying to come up with unique seren/glom spells when right now we are looking at shared spells to address overall combat imbalance. Off topic, I had told envoys at some point that I wouldn't mind different cudgels if they were differentiated by damage type or something but I guess no one was interested because I never heard more about it!

As for "what are we trying to accomplish", I thought it was to realign combat balance for druids. If that means getting rid of sap or changing sap or adding new skills or whatever, nothing is written in stone. I had said I wasn't into rewriting druids from the ground up but that I was open to adding a couple of new spells and/or changing/deleting a couple of old spells.

And those ideas I threw out were just for brainstorming! Add, tweak or disregard as you wish, so long as the goal, as stated, is to bring druids up on par with, say, mages.

Estarra:
on par with, say, mages.

When I asked what part of mages that Druids were being compared against, I was told psionics, which confused me. Primary ~= Tertiary. I don't recall getting a definite answer on the exact problem. No clue if it's a damage problem, insta problem or affs.

Okay well, I'm not really sure that this druid report is the place to be splitting the skillset, honestly. I agree with what Estarra said on that, as I was writing this post, yay forum feature. (Though, it still bothers me that Estarra calls everything in the game 'spells', flargleblargle. Semantics issue for another day, teehee.)

Hopefully the outcome of the report will be:
1) Addition of a new mechanic to help druids.
2) Minimization (or removal) of the current sap mechanic.
3) An opening in the archetype for change, due to the minimization of the obnoxiously unbalancing sap ability.

If these three things happen, I foresee it being a lot easier to create new totem-specific abilities in druidry without totally screwing things up.

Blargh, I was going to post an idea, but I want to respond to the things said. Neos, Psionics is what makes mages really good. Why bother with meld or phantasms when you can take TK and have a run-or-die mechanic in place that is mathematically guaranteed to get an eventual kill if the opponent isn't damn good at hindering psionics (Which most people aren't) or can't kill you before you stack vessels on them. Get two mages in the room, and it's over. TP has less of this issue, but is still MILES better then what you can do with runes or dreamweaving (or ecology or shamanism), even outside of your meld. That's why when you think of mages, it has nothing to do with primary or tertiary, you can stack all of a druid's three skillsets against psionics and psionics will come out ahead!

AquaNeos:

When I asked what part of mages that Druids were being compared against, I was told psionics, which confused me. Primary ~= Tertiary. I don't recall getting a definite answer on the exact problem. No clue if it's a damage problem, insta problem or affs.

I'll go ahead and venture that it's all three. Basically what Enya says above - Your tertiary alone is arguably more effective than druids.

Here is a suggested mechanic for helping with sap. Yes, I know that it uses the already-existing skillname 'darkseed'. This skill would be made non-specific to Hartstone and we'd get something else to replace it. I've included a rough sketch of what the AB would look like, to illustrate the thematic tie-ins:

Druidry - Darkseed
FORESTCAST DARKSEED CALL
FORESTCAST DARKSEED

Unlock Nature's strongest power to remove threats to the forest: Growth! Call forth the quick growing plants and seed your enemies with their spores. Young plants will sprout from the forest's enemies, sapping their strength to slow their body and bring them into Nature's fold!

What you would do is summon this plant into the room, limit of one per druid, demense restricted, costing some power. I suggest this be one of those nifty 5p cost abilities. The druid also has a no/minimal cost ability to call this plant to any room in their demesne, on a fairly long balance. When in the room with the druid and the plant, the druid can then 'seed' a chosen target with the plant. This will knock them off eq for the hell of it (because you're all "whoa, wha?"). While in the room of the plant, you accrue 'growth' points, which are essentially slowtokens. The more slowtokens you have on you, the slower your curing balances get. I'd say that each level should be say... 5% of the balance? Also, as you get more, it expands to more types, in this order (?).

1- Herb - "You are oddly unnerved by the idea of ingesting plants."
2- Focus - "You feel distracted, and it's harder to keep your focus."
3- Smoke - "You are having trouble breathing normally, and are horrified to be burning plants."
4- Purgative - "You feel like you're wrenching away part of yourself when you purge your body"
5- Salve - "Your skin is ashy and turning pale green, no longer absorbing your salves as fast as it used to."
6- Vitals Potions - "You are reluctant to drink more curing elixirs, you feel a presence within you growing larger each time.
7- Physical cures (writhe) "Your joints are locking up, and you have no energy to fight the roots growing from your body."

So that by the time you have all of them, you have 35% slower balances on everything. I suggest making this either only accrue by some active syntax on the part of the druid, or on an automatic timer. The cure for this is standing away from the druid's adjacent rooms for a time, with a faster curing if you are out of the druid's demesne as well. I suggest that this be a pretty early druidry skill, and that the timer on it be very slow at first, scaling up as you get higher into druidry.

.You can then add in a later druidry power-up to this that enables you to suck someone who is seeded back to the 'mother tree' and so on.

Potential other things: Add in a higher up skill that also makes you have a chance to fail the appropriate balances. Add a skill that allows you to 'burn' levels of growth to elicit stronger effects (like stuns or long knocks off appropriate balances).

Potental problems:
1) Code. Not sure how this would work out with the way that healing balances are handled.
2) Power. This may end up being too strong or too weak?
3) Theme. Obvious

Another idea I thought could be potentially interesting would be to instead have an early skill in druidry that allows you to summon an "All-tree" in the center of your demesne, essentially a tree that grows many different fruits/nuts that you can get seeds from. You then use these to plant different special plants in rooms to have effects like Estarra suggested.

EDIT: Basicaly, the idea behind the 'growing over' of a target is that BT are being ebil and using it to take over your body, and HS is pulling a fern-gully and using the growth to encase an enemy of the forest (like hexxus). Even if it's not a mechanic idea we end up going with, I think it'd make a nifty instakill, or at least a corpse destruction move.

AquaNeos:

When I asked what part of mages that Druids were being compared against, I was told psionics, which confused me. Primary ~= Tertiary. I don't recall getting a definite answer on the exact problem. No clue if it's a damage problem, insta problem or affs.

I believe the general consensus is that psionics is strong enough to make up for potential deficiencies in the primary spec. My expectation is that in a spar between an equally skilled druid and mage fighting outside their melds the psionicist mage would win hands down, their meld simply adds to that strength.

Druids do not have a skill that lives up to this, it shows in some of their abilities and in shamanism that druids belong inside their meld at all times, stepping outside means becoming immediately less effective. It creates interesting ripples though, for example a I would expect a nerf to melds is likely to have a greater effect on druids than mages simply because the assumption is that psionics will carry the mage.

It did, the meld nerf back in the day ended up hurting druids far more. I understand (and am fine with) the theme that we are supposed to be tied to our demesne and powerful inside but unimposing outside (like Kiakoda), but eeehh. It's more like we are unimposing outside and unthreatening inside, while mages are great outside and fantastic inside.

Enyalida:

Another idea I thought could be potentially interesting would be to instead have an early skill in druidry that allows you to summon an "All-tree" in the center of your demesne, essentially a tree that grows many different fruits/nuts that you can get seeds from. You then use these to plant different special plants in rooms to have effects like Estarra suggested.

EDIT: Basicaly, the idea behind the 'growing over' of a target is that BT are being ebil and using it to take over your body, and HS is pulling a fern-gully and using the growth to encase an enemy of the forest (like hexxus). Even if it's not a mechanic idea we end up going with, I think it'd make a nifty instakill, or at least a corpse destruction move.

no, no no no, no

I really don't want to have more stuff to have to prep. The description immediately makes me think that it would be like being forced to inscribe runes as part of meld set up. I have suggested previously abilities involving a personal tree for druids, but this was something that would be summoned within the commune and the druid could call on it from afar.

If we are, as we consistently state, intended to be only functional within a meld then I believe our ability to get the meld into a battle ready state should be slightly superior.

Honestly, I'd like something like that more (as it'd tie nicely into a transition to a non-demesne-mechanic version of druids) and think It'd open more spots for new abilities. It'd work like this-ish:

You get the 'all-tree' ability after sapling in druidry. You can only call this tree into the center room of your demesne (that you must be standing in), for a hefty power cost or some other onerous thing (like having it be a 15-30 second channeled action or something). At first this has no effect besides passive vitals regen in the room of the tree, and possibly stopping attempts to knock you out of the trees in that one room. You then get abilities to coax the mothertree into giving you seedlings for other plants to do effects in the room you plant them in. You'd get the sorts of things Estarra suggested for these, simple things that empower you in a single room in some way. You can go back to the tree to replant these somewhere else, or an ability to safely uproot things you've planted to move them.


EDIT: Yes well. I know all about long set-ups, I've played a shaman druid. It's kind of an idea out of an old LustyGroves write up (totally different from achaean groves!) that I did, but I think it'd provide a good way to have a unifying mechanic to different plant growths.

Enyalida:

Honestly, I'd like something like that more (as it'd tie nicely into a transition to a non-demesne-mechanic version of druids) and think It'd open more spots for new abilities. It'd work like this-ish:

You get the 'all-tree' ability after sapling in druidry. You can only call this tree into the center room of your demesne (that you must be standing in), for a hefty power cost or some other onerous thing (like having it be a 15-30 second channeled action or something). At first this has no effect besides passive vitals regen in the room of the tree, and possibly stopping attempts to knock you out of the trees in that one room. You then get abilities to coax the mothertree into giving you seedlings for other plants to do effects in the room you plant them in. You'd get the sorts of things Estarra suggested for these, simple things that empower you in a single room in some way. You can go back to the tree to replant these somewhere else, or an ability to safely uproot things you've planted to move them.

And how long do you expect it would take to do all of this? Is this something that we would be able to use when someone has jumped onto ethereal and started a raid?

For stag we have ~70 seconds of just effect raising, even if you are interleaving other things (spreading meld, summoning saplings, adjusting weather, embedding motes, infusing runes, ancestralcurse, stagtotem) you are probably nearing 90 to 120 seconds for just that room, more if you are spreading out. Adding another 15-30 seconds to that, plus more to spread the plants around seems like we could be looking at anywhere from 2 to 3 minutes before we are "ready" which seems overly long.

Well. That's not really correct. You have to raise demesne (~3-7 seconds per room, depending on if you have to first terrain.), raise effects (either 5 seconds and 8p or ~60 seconds) throughtout your demesne and embed a mote/rune in each room (3 seconds each, you should never embed more then say two motes or runes). That totals to about 4 minutes as is to fully start your demesne, assuming you were totally unprepared and had no demesne up at all. You don't need to (And totally shouldn't) bother with Acurse until you have targets more or less stuck in one place, and shouldn't mess with stagtotem unless you are camping a single spot. This is how things currently are and is fully intended, afaik. The idea is that we have strong passives (hahaha) that hit everyone (hahaha) over a big area (hahahahaHAHA), but take a while to get ready.

In the suggested plants idea, you wouldn't be able to or want to set up full plants in EVERY room. You should actually never set all of your possible things in every room, it's a total waste of time and resources. You want to effect perhaps 3-4 rooms tops, usually.

Enyalida:

Well. That's not really correct. You have to raise demesne (~3-7 seconds per room, depending on if you have to first terrain.), raise effects (either 5 seconds and 8p or ~60 seconds) throughtout your demesne and embed a mote/rune in each room (3 seconds each, you should never embed more then say two motes or runes). That totals to about 4 minutes as is to fully start your demesne, assuming you were totally unprepared and had no demesne up at all. You don't need to (And totally shouldn't) bother with Acurse until you have targets more or less stuck in one place, and shouldn't mess with stagtotem unless you are camping a single spot. This is how things currently are and is fully intended, afaik. The idea is that we have strong passives (hahaha) that hit everyone (hahaha) over a big area (hahahahaHAHA), but take a while to get ready.

In the suggested plants idea, you wouldn't be able to or want to set up full plants in EVERY room. You should actually never set all of your possible things in every room, it's a total waste of time and resources. You want to effect perhaps 3-4 rooms tops, usually.

And you are adding more time to this set up. The original allergies idea was one balance and a bit of power which then effectively activates additional powers of your meld. What you are suggesting seems to be encouraging camping a single spot which would mean totem, and, if it were effective, pathtwist which would include a desire for a larger number of rooms to increase the number of paths.