Could someone give me a brief description of Occultists/Sylvans?

Ritter

I'm relatively new- I've been familiar with the game for quite a while, but I've only recently started playing.

I was wondering if someone would be willing to give me an idea how occultists and sylvans actually play, what their combat is like, and how well represented their houses are in the game right now. I am especially curious about Occultists because they seem to have relatively little presence and information regarding them on the forums- certainly not anything recent (their class forum hasn't seen a new post in about a year).

Would anyone mind helping me out?

Tael

Neither have houses in the game anymore. All of the cities recently underwent pretty big changes (the "renaissance") and replaced their old houses with new ones that are more all-encompassing. So Eleusis no longer has the Sylvans, but instead has the Heartwood Kin and the Scions of the Ithmia, both of which take Sylvans (and all the other classes).

You'll also find that occultist information is harder to find outside of the game and, now that the house is gone, outside of the existing occultists. Historically, the occultist house was by far the most secretive house in the game, pretty much since it was first established. Thematically, there's some variation, but a lot of people in the house (especially after the influence of Amunet) played up a sort of Edwardian, real-world occultist aesthetic - refined, if excentric, gentlemen and women who secretly study chaos and wield its power behind the scenes. You've also probably seen less about the house because, until it was literally destroyed about a week ago, it was in a pretty unfortuante decline in terms of population that had been going on for quite a while.

As for the classes:

Sylvan was pretty recently changed fairly dramatically when concoctions became a tradeskill. So now you have Groves, which lets you turn an unclaimed forest room in the game into your personal grove, gives you a ton of abilities while inside it, and eventually gives you a quarterstaff you can plant to make a sort of temporary grove in any forest room. Propagation turns you into a viridian, gives you access to a bunch of passives, and lets you kill with heartseed (which you're going to work toward mostly using evenomed thornrend to hinder while breaking limbs, and potentially eclipse to hide the heartseed mesage). Weatherweaving lets you cast a number of spells, lets you cast two spells at once, and involves building toward fulmination (you make a weather singularity in a room that builds as you cast spells, then you use it to kill). So most of the time you're either thornrending or double-casting spells.

Occultist has a ton of utility with dopplegangers, astralform, tarot, pathfinder, etc. They're incredibly useful and strong in group combat. It's been a while since I played one, but I think the primary focus 1v1 is still on a strategy that involves using whisperingmadness and hecate to stick enough mental afflictions long enough to enlighten and unravel. A lot of the class's abilities are accessed via a group of chaos entities you summon and that follow you around, which you command to do things on a separate balance. Recently, a thing was added to allow you to get truenames off of cleanseaura (which requires your opponent to be at >40% mana), which might theoretically lead into different kill strategies, but I'm still not entirely clear on how useful having truenames is for getting kills 1v1.

The wiki (wiki.achaea.com) is a good place to skim through the skills of each class.

Tahquil

As a Sylvan, I love the Sylvan class. With the changes to their skills I feel they really are a breath of fresh air and no long run the line of being the bastard child of a druid/magi merger.

Sylvan are factionally tied. Their link to nature means that you will have to pick between joining Eleusis or being a rogue. An Eleusian can give you more information on how their houses are playing out right now.

It's thought that Sylvans have the potential to be a powerful pvp but noone has really had the time to look into it like the high level occultist fighters have. The Viridian morph allows use of the propagation skill where you can tailor your affliction combinations as well as a few defences depending on which plants you will to grow on yourself. With a 1 second (I think) class balance between opens a large field of tactics than can be changed on the fly.

Weatherweaving also has huge impact even as a stand-alone skill. So that means if you are ever caught not in your viridian morph you can still stand a chance against an opponent. Calling on the weather you can cast a combination of spells on your target and causing mild afflictions all while gearing up and generating energy for your harder hitting spells.

Groves is.. a bit of a utility skill now. It gives you a place to call your own. You can rez people there, use it to refresh your endurance and willpower, seal it off from the world or use it to spy on people, and its a handy place to quickreturn to if you are in some other forest or garden.

RP wise still much love. Tahquil can literally make your hair stand on end with weather changes if she gets annoyed. If she is angry she can hulk out into a viridian. Sylvans can also cast illusions in a room that can help with storytelling and it's nice to talk to people who come to your grove for a grove rain.

In the end it's a matter of choice, do you want to be a Groot or a chimera with a chicken face and elephant butt.

Cynlael

Ritter said:

I'm relatively new- I've been familiar with the game for quite a while, but I've only recently started playing.

I was wondering if someone would be willing to give me an idea how occultists and sylvans actually play, what their combat is like, and how well represented their houses are in the game right now. I am especially curious about Occultists because they seem to have relatively little presence and information regarding them on the forums- certainly not anything recent (their class forum hasn't seen a new post in about a year).

Would anyone mind helping me out?

What the other two have said is basically correct. Neither have a specific house now - Eleusian houses accept all Eleusis-possible classes, as will Ashtan's when they're completed soon.

Regarding how one fights... The old thornrend-prep limbs into heartseed is largely a thing of the past now, unless you're completely lucky and the person you're fighting screws up big time. Weatherweaving is what you'll kill people with 9/10 times, their afflictions are definitely not 'mild' and can wind up killing you quite quickly, if tracked and utilised correctly (constant usage of energy that you build is required for this, for triple-afflictions so you can overwhelm them) - while locking is theoretically (and completely) possible, often times you'll end up killing them with damage before you can complete the lock (completion of the lock, is pretty much the only time you'll use propagation abilities, outside of the passive regeneration effects and such)

Occultists, Tael was basically spot on. You use an array of entities to build afflictions on a target (one ent at a time, on approximately a 1.8-ish second balance, depending on how much intelligence you have. Combined with instill in occultism, and unnamable (less so, but it can overwhelm if luck is in your favour) you work on a 3-stage effect. First is cadmus, which requires 3 'physical' afflictions, which is limited to everything that instill can afflict with. Secondly, with the help of cadmus (this makes focusing mentals generate more afflictions), you then work onto hecate which requires 5 afflictions (this prevents whispering madness curing for 15 seconds). After that, you hit madness, enlighten, then unravel for the kill.
   - The cleanseaura thing Tael mentioned, is still being hammered out by Occultists for the most part. It can be fun though, once you get the hang of using it (I won't explain that, because selfish :pleased: )

Both classes can shine exceptionally well in group fights, as they both have a decent amount of utility/support when tri-transed.. I'm probably missing something, but that should cover most of what you want to know.

Ayami

The Occultists don't have a house right now, it was just destroyed. Historically, they've been extremely secretive, which is why information is lacking.

I can't help you much with combat beyond Occultists working by stacking afflictions and Sylvans working with limb/body damage and high direct damage.

Tael

For the record, the stated intention of heartseed was that it's balanced as a sort of "starter" kill strategy - something that's a little bit easier to grasp and perform, and a kill strategy that you only need one trans skill to do. I don't know if that's how it turned out in practice, but it seems like it might still be doable as a midbie combatant.

@Cynlael, intelligence changes the speed of occultism or domination now? How much? Can I get the Sena breakdown?

Cynlael

Intelligence affects entity balance, caps out at 16 (or 17, one of the two, don't remember, I do fine with 15)
IIRC, it's -0.1s per point of int, down to a cap of 1.8 or 1.7 ent bal (I -think- those are right, it might be 1.6)
Baseline is 2.3 or 2.2 for the two main ents (leech/humbug)

Ritter

I just want to thank you all for the comments- I can't say I've decided on anything yet, but it has given me quite a bit to chew on.