Druid Class. Outdated?

Skye

@Cahin

Addendum to @Delphinus' post. The opposing team really doesn't have it all that bad anymore. No grove cage, no grove hinder, no more totems.

Back in the day when grove was at its peak of overpoweredness, holobombs didn't destroy forest (they've removed and added that clause several times since I think), you could stack icewalls AND grove cage ( cage eventually was re-coded to break walls, and now it's been removed altogether), and then add a totem to the mix. You could also see Jack using forestbinding for pk because back in those days, hardly anyone had wings. Compared to all that, all the grove stuff you get now is peanuts and a stroll through the park.  

Having said that, I would have loved for Grove Lightning to have been altered to two forms of a delayed/weaker area wide attack while in grove and the current LoS version.

 In such a wide area to defend like a forest, chasing down exterminators to rush them is just as difficult when their MO is to A) duanathar away, b) Blackwind away c) exterminate and buckledown somewhere with a totem so you get beckoned. Even trying to rush them is a pain in the ass because they just lay GHands everywhere and break up your team. If I could leave vines everywhere Ghands style, or you give me back grove hinder then maybe we'll consider the merits of 'rushing'.

Mishgul

Skye said:

@Cahin

Addendum to @Delphinus' post. The opposing team really doesn't have it all that bad anymore. No grove cage, no grove hinder, no more totems.

Back in the day when grove was at its peak of overpoweredness, holobombs didn't destroy forest (they've removed and added that clause several times since I think), you could stack icewalls AND grove cage ( cage eventually was re-coded to break walls, and now it's been removed altogether), and then add a totem to the mix. You could also see Jack using forestbinding for pk because back in those days, hardly anyone had wings. Compared to all that, all the grove stuff you get now is peanuts and a stroll through the park.  

Having said that, I would have loved for Grove Lightning to have been altered to two forms of a delayed/weaker area wide attack while in grove and the current LoS version.

 In such a wide area to defend like a forest, chasing down exterminators to rush them is just as difficult when their MO is to A) duanathar away, b) Blackwind away c) exterminate and buckledown somewhere with a totem so you get beckoned. Even trying to rush them is a pain in the ass because they just lay GHands everywhere and break up your team. If I could leave vines everywhere Ghands style, or you give me back grove hinder then maybe we'll consider the merits of 'rushing'.

It depends entirely on who you are and who you are up against

Skye

keyword here being exterminators, you'll have at least one necromancer in the group who'll be dropping ghands like poo from an incontinent dog

Mishgul

It's not about the abilities or the skills, its' about the people dealing with them.

Asmodron

Simply put, as much as Grove nerfs were needed with them forest combat has become very one-sided

Zeon

The mechanics of forest combat are fine, all the problems you speak of our problems with entrenching which is a problem in all large group combat. The problem with forest combat is that one side gets to initiate it whenever they want and the other side just has to deal. There is no back and forth, fights are completely on the aggressors terms (thus it's not fun).

Mishgul

Forest combat has nothing to do with this. Forest combat is one sided in that one side is always the aggressor and the other is the defender, but in terms of balance it is fine. When the best of Mhaldor go up against the best of Eleusis, more often than not, the fights will even out.

The druid class is fine. The style of combat requires a specific mindset that most of you probably do not enjoy using to win fights.

Druid is a good class, Sylvan is an excellent class, Sentinel could do with buffs. The forestal faction is doing well in terms of overall combat usefulness. This topic needs to stop being brought up.

Tanris

Fighting against a side with beckon as one without is frustrating, because they will (generally) get to pick the place where you'll engage. However, you do have several options. Let's assume you only have druids/sylvans/sentinels for a moment:

Step one, have sentinel fly adjacent to enemy group

Step 2, grove gate to them, leave someone in your grove.

Step 3, Sentinel writheblocks beckon dir while group enters, druids/other sentinels block dir. Have either the person in your grove start grove summon on the propper (if rooms not exterminated yet) or:

Step 4, axe/lightning the totemer until he either shields or bails. You can be sure the totems down because Mhaldor don't have angel aura

Step 5, Assuming no bard (you should really bribe someone to actively play it), this is the only point when you should have minor issues. You can either wait to gate to the sentinel until he calls them down already (viable, given ghands duration, but possibly not if you're on a time limit due to exterm), or you can just continue to LoS with reflexed concs (Eleusis are hands down the most powerful LoS faction for this reason alone). If you discard the theoretical situation and have a knight, you can falcon retrieve the monoliths at the group (most people won't waste flames) and just gate the moment the propper dies. Gate is amazing because of the 0 warning.

There are a lot of ways to deal with Mhaldor as a nature class, and the same goes the other way. As Mizik likes to say, find solutions not problems. The Mhaldor/Eleusis concept is a very well designed matchup, evident by the fact that neither side has many hard counters for the others abilities. (When you start needing these, its usually a good sign that something is probably too unanticipatedly strong). It would be better to fix those overly strong abilities and do away with counters completely IMO, but that's a personal opinion based on very little.

Garao

Accepting bribes. Will be serious.