Glad you agree. You already can't put guards at every entrance at their current cost, so that should be about right.

The way conflict is eating nerfs left and right, I'm dissapointed I came back (and even more so upset that I wasted money on credits).

Just to clarify one more time --- conflict is not being nerfed. You can go out and kill whoever you want to at any time of day. I can gather a group to raid the EtherGlom, Celestia, Water, Earth, or Nil at any time, and none of that is affected much by any of these changes. There are problems with some discretionary powers being too powerful, but other than that (which is not at all related to this problem) I don't know what everyone is complaining about.

So guards are stronger now? Conflict should not be made up of raiding guards, it should be made up of getting past the guards to accomplish some real goal. Now, an individual will have a harder time raiding guards alone. How is that a bad thing in any sense of the term? Isn't that what we've all been asking for?

I'm much more concerned with stuff that may be better in another topic. Matter of fact.. I'll make that in a few minutes (or hours, depending on my schedule).

I'm sorry, but buffing ripple even more makes raiding Cosmic incredibly dumb. Elemental raids with groups in flux were already impossible. Free discretionary powers = nerfed conflict.

at least you dont have to fight through stunning npc as well as ripple

When was ripple buffed? Apparently I missed that.

I think that all discretionary powers should be more along the lines of the new bard powers. So, yes, group conflict is mucked up by discretionary powers. There are still other possibilities like villages/wildnodes/weakenings. I hope discretionary powers do get looked at, but all of the constant complaining is annoying, especially since we've been asking for guard buffs. People complain that guards are too weak, people complain that guards got buffed. People complain that bards need guards/powers, people complain that bards got guards/powers.

Make up your minds!

you silly troll, you hide under your bridge too long and don't see everything. Weakenings are broken still despite the "fix." In short, they don't work. Mini weakenings don't alert any attackers and tend to take an hour to do so you spend an hour to raid without discretionary powers or some such. Village revolts approximately once every 8 days. less than once a week. Completely random timing tends to balance the number of peak times with off peak times. So in reality you end up making one in every two and giving you conflict once every 2 weeks. Wildnodes are conflict only for the cities and they've always been one sided for Celest or Mag. I have more bulls defending wildnodes than Serens.

rofl. That first sentence was funny.

And hmmm. I didn't know mini weakenings didn't alert orgs. How boring! And is it true that mini-weakenings deactivate a construct for a mere three hours? If so, they should increase it to a day or so.

They should definitely increase the effect of a mini-weakening. I don't want to feel obligated to raid at 3 am if I weaken the construct at 3 am.

yeah three hours. doesn't alert anyone. Seren newbs have killed Glom newbs before during one and that hasn't even alerted them. Plus it takes an hour. few people want to raid for an hour just so a few people (like half the group that mini raided) can fight.

but then again I also don't think it alerts cause if you've been on one, just imagine how spammy that would be to hear a construct cry out every time someone finishes focusing. That's literally 500 cries for help.

Not if it cried out after the construct got below a certain point, instead of crying out every time someone finishes focusing.

If I'm following this right, the complaint is that it used to be ridiculously easy to get past guards, and now it's ridiculously hard. What I wonder is, is it really ridiculously hard, or is it just that people are so used to the trivially easy tactic that they haven't taken the time to stop and think about coming up with actually clever tactics?

I'm reminded of hearing the same conversation back when they first put the Faethorn archways in, and ensured you could only go through them at ground level (this is back when they led to a corner of Etherwilde/Etherglom, not the nexus). "But raids are impossible now," people whined, "a pile of guards and totems at the archway stop everyone." Narsrim, of all people, told everyone to man up, and promptly demonstrated a technique using serpent that could get past the guards to carry out a raid. It was tricky, delicate, and risky, but it worked. Basically he was saying, don't complain just because it's no longer as easy as saying "lol i fly over u", you have to actually come up with something and carry it out. After a while, everyone got used to tricks like that, and the people who had been complaining about the nerfing of raids were soon shouting down other people when they complained.

I wonder if it's really like that again, or if this genuinely does make getting past guards impossible. I think we're going to have to wait and see.

Actually, he started using "spur broom skyward" while paralyzed, which had absolutely no risk, took no skill, and certainly wasn't delicate (and though I was told it wasn't a bug, I've still got no clue how you can spur something paralyzed or entangled).

Narsrim's strategy won't work on villages because of distort. Half of Lusternia doesn't have lowmagic anyways, and less than half of Lusternia's raiders have serpent. The flying mount adaptation of said strategy will no longer work, even in undistorted areas, unless you're an amazingly tanky bastard. It's still fine for getting around guards where the area isn't distorted.

The complaint last time was that it made it impossible for a group to raid--only a few skilled fighters can bypass that, and they usually end up doing it alone. You can't zerg 20 people at 20 guards and a statue and expect to manage it. This really adds to that, which is kinda sad, since some of those village comm raids were a good way to teach people how to handle themselves in more stressful raids.

That was actually Kamilah and "spur crow skyward." Narsrim figured out how to time serpent.

Maybe guards shouldn't gank one person at a time, instead spreading themselves out more.

The point wasn't the specific technique he used. The point is, the ideal answer is that guards should be possible but not easy to get past, and maybe, as then, the "oh no!" reaction is premature. It should take more than a broom to get past a legion of guards, so now that it does, get cracking on finding techniques. Serpent may just be one approach of many to be discovered.

(Though the "not everyone has lowmagic" argument doesn't seem very valid when so many things depend on having someone with great pentagram on your team. If the worst this means is you can't raid alone, you need at least one person on your team with serpent, that sounds fine.)

No, it was Narsrim.

I watched him do it on more than one occasion. I think Kamilah picked it up from him after various forum discussions on the tactic.

Edit: I've actually been told that he picked it up from Kamilah, but either way-- he was using it.

Ok, so the people who correctly time serpent can get in. How do you expect to get everyone else in?

EDIT: And, actually, they can't, because distortion drops serpent and stun stops mount spur.