So after being gone from the game for a mere 8 years

Ailish

* My main profession changed from a damage dealing/pet based profession to what looks like strictly affliction based

* As a result of above, I now have a completely useless artifact

* My second profession no longer uses groves from combat and looks completely different.

* My council has gone demonic

* WTF is a vialbelt?!

* Everyone is using enemy affliction trackers now.

This is going to be an interesting process of getting back into combat, I can already tell.

Khizan

1. Summoner DPS has improved dramatically; it can be an affliction class but it's a very strong damage profession.
2. Druid has changed a ton but it's also much stronger than it used to be
3. Since you've been away so long and the professions have changed so dramatically Garryn would quite possibly refund your lessons if you messaged him and explained the situation.
4. Vialbelts are a way to avoid the "I have to carry 300 vials into combat" crap. You fill the vialbelt with <thing>. Whenever the last of your <thing> is used the vialbelt will refill the vial for you.
5. Only Demonic does team affliction tracking.

Ailish

Thanks.

RE: 1 - it's actually Hunter, not Summoner.  Hunter seems a little clunky to me, based on solely reading the skill help files.  Add not very tanky

3 - Garryn is the person to ask? Good to know.  I messaged Lachesis and didn't hear anything back.  

I was an unapologetic IMTS user back in the day, but this time I think I'm going to try to roll my own, since unlike zmud,  Mudlet doesn't look like an unstable pile of shit.

Khizan

Ah, yes. Hunter is strictly affliction based glass cannon stuff.

Mereis

Filthy Magicker in Khandava!

If you want to play Demonic in Khandava, then Summoner has pets (doppleganger, pathfinder) and is primarily a damage-based class, with affliction-based potential. It's also one of the tankier professions in Demonic (second only to Deathknight). If you love trees, we have a sort of demonic druid profession in Defiler, except we make trees prettier (...) Also a damage-based class, a bit slower to build up than Summoner, but you get your very own treant to help you in fights and also bring you tea.

Ailish

Eh, I'm not going to change circles.  

But fear not, my second character is demonic.

Aleutia

Unless they toggled it off, since you were an old Khandavan, you SHOULD have a free refund on all of your professions, but you might check with Jeremy first. All Khandavans were given refunds because the org switched from magick to demonic so everyone was free to decide where they wanted to go.

So if you don't want to play hunter or druid, and want to try a different magick profession, you should get free refunds on them (unless it was toggled off, I don't think it was though).

Ailish

Well, I sent a message to Garryn, so we'll see what he says.  I think I want to keep the Druid, but I'm not really feeling the new hunter at all.  

Iniar

Hunter is really unfriendly to newbies/casuals. Really really unfriendly. Does squat if you don't want to use afflictions. Perhaps even worse than pre-ghast diabolist, where you could at least sap/sap/sap/sap away and get lucky in a scrum.

Eldreth

- Druid is magick's best utility class. And you are now mobile. Pick up RG as your second.
- Autocuring is far faster than old IMTS. Iniar and Baasche both use Mudlet, are willing to help any who ask, and have Druid and RG stuff to help you get started (tracking in the system is mostly on the offensive side these days).

Ailish

Is autocuring good enough to not even need a defensive system anymore?

Eldreth

Yep. Made even better by recent changes to allow you to customise priority orders based on certain matchups/situations.

Khizan

I don't think there's a single fighter who does not use autocuring anymore.

It is possible to code a healing system that handles things better than autocuring does, because it makes some really odd choices involving secondary cures, but autocuring gets to ignore latency issues because it runs server-side and that makes it very very hard to beat.

For serious combat you will want to adjust your priorities, because the defaults suck. For A-lister 1v1 you will want to write up things to adjust priorities on mid-fight and the like, but autocuring itself is rock solid and they'll just be wrappers that manipulate autocuring instead of a full up healing system.

Iniar

Zith uses his own curer actively.

You will want to extend the auto-curer if you're serious at all about fighting. Things I have so far are:

 - custom priorities against different classes

 - custom thresholds for mana and health sips against mana kill classes

 - custom defence preferences against different classes

Extended things:

 - custom clotter, allowing for mana threshold management, dryblood management, haemophilia management

 - reprioritise hemotoxin as purge becomes available

 - reprioritise sunallergy as it approaches stage 2

 - reprioritise numbness as it approaches paralysis

 - the ability to sip health/mana through recklessness

 - the ability to cure blackout when desired

 - the ability to pause and restart autocuring with associated success/failure messages (cleave, behead, travel etc)

Specific anti-class things:

 - the ability to handle blackout +- disrupt

 - management of summoner's lust

 - reprioritising blindness when the outrider surges transfix pet

 - shadowplant priorities when an assassin shadowplants you

Defence is almost as important as offence against good players, but there are so few good players you can get by with just changing priorities.

Aysari

So basically, versus most Outriders these days, you keep hyssop at very high priority >.>

Iniar

I actually don't mind fighting the transfix, as there are some workable work-arounds. The main issue for me is the duration of the transfix, which pretty much applies to all transfixes in the game, only compounded by Outrider because it can be neatly melded into the main line of attack. Losing 15 seconds every 50-60 seconds is massive, and five seconds is enough space for two herbs and one focus.

I know most of the other players are thinking of swapping the effect of transfix out for some other thing come classleads, but I personally would rather see a shortened duration of transfix, perhaps 2 seconds with the same cooldown on surging that it currently possesses.

The problem with just statically leaving hyssop high priority is that a smart outrider can then just keep piling on the nightshade to protect haemophilia. It only works if your offense (wytch) eventually hinders the Outrider (who are funnily immune to clumsiness) before you get beaten by haemophilia.

@Septus, @Kryss - enlighten us.

Kryss

If you don't want to be transfixed, you have to eat hyssop above everything else. This means you will quickly fall behind in afflictions. So you have to have an offence equal to theirs in order to have a chance. That's really all there is to be said about it right now. Well, unless you're a monk with Kaido blind and deaf.

No oxalis on a blackened or icecoat spear would probably make this better while still allowing the transfix to happen (traps, axes, transfix surge itself taking away blindness).