Most challenging or worst combos

[Slade]

There seems to be a ton of vuln and/or otherwise very marginal chars, but they all have bigtime strengths they can leverage to pull themselves up and into real contention if used right like duergar thief, fire warrior, gnome ranger, and on and on and on.

What do you guys think are the real duds out there right now? Either just terrible combos, or they can be decent but are extremely challenging. Anything straight up these days is pretty boring unless against the best. Even though I haven't liked cabals much I almost think I need to make future chars shit like vuln race, average class, cabal, just to keep things challenging enough.

Its harder than it seems to find a lot of them. Just about anything seems to have good things going for it, maybe not in comparison to cheese combos but that doesn't matter. Here are some chars I think are interesting:


Duds:

Fire Shaman - Actually sounds reasonably doable, except for strike of faith/pain. Otherwise you would just watch for types and styles like you would say a paladin which is acceptable. Without a new legacy for blocking/repelling/whatever strikes, you would just have to run away from paladins all the time though which is lame, as well as any enemy DKs. Some nice/fun things like big str, resistances, but massive vulns, horrid int/wis, 2 prac to 60 something coupled with lots of spells that would benefit from training (yuck), basically flight dependent (dirt), etc. Could be fun.

Gnome Thief - Not horrid at all, especially lately. A nice challenge though.



Not duds, but interesting and more challenging:

Duergar Berserker, Thief
Gnome Invoker, Bard, Warrior
Illithid Illusionist
Fire Warrior


Interesting, becoming less challenging:

Duergar Warrior
Avian Necromancer, Invoker, Warrior
Gnome Ranger
Dwarf Berserker


Interesting, strong:

Too many to list (fire bers, dwarf war, drow dk, drow ninja, blah blah blah)



Ideas?

[Matthais]

Duergar thieves are pretty good. Axe, faerie bane, plus, much like a ninja, you should always be combat superior. notice how axe, much like a dawrf warriors favoured weapon, cancels outs its vulns. pry/steal anything thats dangerous. Counterbalance cancels bash. I enjoyed the one I played. I would put it in the less challanging catagory.

If you have a shit load of time and or awesome scripts, a one pract fire shaman probably would be nasty.

no warrior race/combo should be on this list, They are all good.

[Davairus]

Two words - drow warrior.

[Xazappith]

second on drow warrior, i got it to 25 before rage deleting.

[Slade]

Sounds fine to me.. not too different than a halfling. Warrior of course is already inherently strong. You just have to be a dirt whore Bepodo style. That will keep enemy pinned in combat style disadv well enough. One pracs will keep the hitpoints from being completely horrid. Autosneak would be a very nice perk. You just have to fight differently (bow and dirt instead of polearm and overhead crush, stuff like that).

Optimal - 2H - Bow. Very underrated. Leverages the power of your dodge. Will shred dual wield. Ideal scenario, and a very good one at that.

Acceptable - Dual wield - Parry/DualParry is not so strong, but you do get a killer favored combo with flail and off-hand dagger.

Dangerous - Shield - Definitely the weak link. Volley will be helpful here and underrated, even against non-bow 2h. Otherwise maybe even try bow vs. other 2h.

Over par as far as challenge for a warrior goes though, sure. Not defending my own picks or attacking others or anything - I could rattle off many (and probably more) strengths of my listed ones too. Hard to pinpoint any combos as outright sucking these days.

[Xazappith]

Low health plus trash pkers. 400 hp at level 30. 50, maybe doable, 30.. not a chance.

[Matthais]

I would put elves below drow, well, at 50 anyway, once they lose some of their racial legacies in pk situations. But, autosneak makes fleeing and running/healing easier, well, if your good at that I suppose.
Drows being a sneak attack warrior and a oporutunist could work out well.

Plus side, they train quick at 30?

[Davairus]

Drow warriors:
Erm, halflings dont have any vulns either, nevermind the fact they actually have a chance fleeing hobbled (unlike drows, which are pretty much done for). And dont forget dirts are lower duration from warrior classes as well. Think its also the worst parry in the game after that hobble hits, I'd have to look into it to be sure, but I know the low str/wis is bad. Also hobble strips autosneak. Not to mention 500 exp cost. I could argue a few positives but I doubt I'd roll it.. and I have played plenty pre-game changes underdogs myself (elf illus, fire shaman, etc). I imagine it'd work out much like a pre-legacy elf warrior, doing stuff like trying to get type/style double advantage and disarming for the spin bash stuff (that's why its there, because they need it). Consider a race like a fire giant can get hobbles off on you without even combat advantage due to str. I think dud.

If youre fighting someone without hobble its obviously a different matter. But the low hp's of a drow warrior (you wont make it up with trains, warrior hp levels are large so mostly con-based, 10 hp ranks compared to 17 hp ranks is very noticeable at 50) makes all sorts of things lethal than usual - backstabs, hellstreams, harm finish, thief skills, bows.. anything that gets through its defences hurts like a bitch. It isnt like ninjas where you get offhand enhanced, and cruise with long dusts and long dirts, and have no trouble flying because you're rubbing dirt out quickly.. you're not doing that. There are a few issues with warriors that compensate for a bunch of race problems I suppose... anyone can get aliases and do fast switch hobbles right now. Among other warriors though, drows a challenging race.


Also you could put healer on your 'challenging to pk with' combos, that's supposedly tricky with the affbreak dependency and lethality/dispel undead changes, no enhanced damage, etc. They're a bit limited in options though. Gets irritating trying to read affects in pks with healer due to so many you'd like to watch - sanc, pro shield, ward, blah blah. Using affect sort with that is healthy. Delete if you die to anything other than assassinate/gangbang though.


Then there's vampire which gets entered blindly, usually leading to ruin. Easy to exploit vuln and some other stuff that everyone else is better off not knowing. This class does rock for punishing people who have no saves, even super-decked people, so its still worth something. That isnt all noobs either. I dont recommend vamp to anyone who isnt tons of experience because its sink or swim and you'll never be forgotten, which could be very embarassing.


Also drow shaman is pretty shitty with that bad defs/18 wis weapon ward, not fire shaman shitty but, damn.. its uphill for sure. Good suit of rares will get that more fun, alternatively a buttload of gambling.


Also I might even relegate fire warrior on that list you have there, just for one simple reason ... ice vuln. The ice weapons are easily attainable and weapon advantage all the fire giant favoreds. Its a really stiff vuln, we could flag noremove on the frostbrand and it'll still suck balls. Gone are the days of dirt/disarm/sac. Sweet if people let things fall your way, but, should be noobs.. if you need to see proof thats bad look at the Warlord Imm playing one and being cannon fodder. If you are trying to suck balls roll one up and see. I don't see a "bigtime strength" there, just some easier hobbling, their own 15 int/16 dex dodge is easy enough to penetrate as well anyway... and then the weapon advantage vuln weapons.. its one of those combos that needs some damn good eq. Remember that before combat modules, there were no weapon advantages to own your high strength parry, and mace had a good attack.. wis wasnt a part of parry, your fire giant could just master the weapons to handle that stuff. Now its a different matter.


I know a human dk is so bad vs dirts that its worth gimping your hp with drow "power" for the chance of safely fleeing that. Theres a strong gank factor there with unholy frenzy you probably have seen, but other than that, I don't know how you came up with drow dk (or actually dk anything) is strong though. Sideswipe'll fix that for you. They do have some fun mals, if you arent taking damage too fast to actually try casting them (vamp touch healing I'm not sure about, can't remember if thats blocked by a save on pks or not). If you did drow dk you'd have to power rank like crazy to get a safe pool of hps to play with.


Elf paladins have taken a nasty hit also.. not that they were great to begin with. But pre-errantry paladins are still tough as always, no lag skill and not much moves, if looking at lowbie stuff. I'm a little out of touch with lowbies, since not pk'ing til 50, but I'm sure paladin is still as tough as I remember it there. Especially an elf one.

Drow dk/Elf pal both are suffering presently from int doing almost nothing for them despite both being spellcasters. Drow warriors get a nicer dodge from that so that's a bit better (again, 1 hobble its gone)

Blah blah, I could go on but I dont want to post too much. I guess throw a drow illusionist up their, one poor defence, dex-based hitroll might be helpful for dreamstrucks I guess..

[Slade]

Ah duh.. drow invoker.

[Davairus]

If we're adding drow invoker we might as well add drow necro too - not least because its tough starting scratch with raising decent zombies... I predict a lot of mobdeaths from that. Also they won't benefit at all from autosneak because of the zombies giving them away. Ints not mattering much, 500 exp... A drow invoker has mana shield to block some afflictives, and he's pretty set with a nice long sanc and weapon ward. Drows are in a lot of gimp combos I guess.

[Mendek]

They shouldn't be.

[Kalist19]

Fire shaman is worthless. The lack of weapon ward doesn't make them only fodder vs paladins/dks. It also makes them fodder vs fighters/thieves. This means fire shamans have a good chance vs...necros?

The ice vuln is also really shitty, as they have no way to get around it. They just have to eat it from weapons they aren't proficient with. If you want to know what kind of damage a frostbrand can do, look on invokation. For that reason alone fires are very hard to play. Just a guess, but I'd say fires have the easiest to exploit vulns out there. Either grab a frostbrand, ice staff, effigy or punch in box and have at 'er. All of which are high avg dam and easy to get rares.

[Esivole]

well, fire shamans would get pwnd by necros too I would think.

[Davairus]

Its good vs mobs.

[Slade]

I think you could just randomly hit equip macros between spells (like c hex, staff macro -> c det, weapon+shield macro -> c blin, etc.) enough to throw people off a bit. If a paladin can do it a shaman can (and I think they can, at least a little bit and any amount helps). You'll still eat some weapon skills but it would make it a lot harder for them to where it wouldn't just be open season on you. The vulns are still horrid. Actually the most offputting thing about fires to me though is just the 2 prac to low 60 something coupled with horrid 15/15 training rates, that just sounds so brutal.