Elf Pali's..

[Hamp]

What sort of stragety should I exactly use against elfs being a fire giant? I used axes, had saves v.aff up a bunch, all the spells.. sanc, protection, armor.. Try to dirt kick then bash.. Get my ass handed to me every time unless I'm hasted so I can land the bashes and hit them more. Just wondering what everyone thinks would be the best stragety..

[Jerold]

Well, Mr. Fire warrior guy, you have a couple advantages over a paly and a couple big time vulns. So playing the odds and using the warrior skills that I know one of your stature has long perfected should allow you to hand this elf his/her a$$. Weapon selection is paramount. You know everythying meaning you can wield better weaponry for maximum parrying and damage. Make sure you wield items that palys are clueless about. Also, you are not vuln to afflictive magics but being able to save against them isn't going to hurt you. Load up on the afflictive stuff. I never liked to bash palys with a ton of health. If you miss you are going to eat some serious wraths and I bet your sanc is not going to last as long as theirs. Dirt, dirt, dirt. It's your best friend. Being paranoid, I don't usually lag palys unless I have them blinded. Also, big time palys would usually wear a shield against a big boy like you...why not relieve them of that? Palys also get serious luck bonuses. Check your own out before you fight. If nothing is landing, that could be your culprit. I tend to be ultra conservative when my luck is low. Just the other night I had Jagure challenging me to a fight but I couldnt walk two steps without my luck nagging me. Today when we fought, I was pretty lucky and Jag had his work cut out for him.
The biggest reason why elves are a pain in the bum is because of the sneak/flee can't see where the heck they went problem. Really try to becareful of your battleground. If combat has been initiated and there are at least 4 possible exits to a room, that elf is getting away. If there but 1 or two, you have a pretty good chance of keeping the heat on if things start going your own way. If the elf is blinded, most players spam random directions trying to walk it off. If the room only has a couple exits, they will usually be walking into a wall buying you some time to smash and destroy.

[Rezakhan]

The last point Jerold makes is key--the battleground is very important. Fighting an elf in town is almost as annoying as fighting a thief in town--make the pally fight you somewhere enclosed, that you know very well. Also going off what Jerold said, the dirt is key--even against a mounted Knight, you should dirt first, then worry about bashing them off the horse.
Two things to add on--one, is try to perfect your timing. Notice when sanc falls on your opponent, then try to figure out when you are likely to see it fall again. Start bashing just before, and if you time it right, you will get some rounds in with your elf unsanced.
Two, is to be willing to fight when hurt, and use that to your advantage. Stock up on nymph hearts, and when you are hurt, try running an area or two away, chowing on them, and berserking. Many people, when tracking, will take an eye off of their spells, meaning that they may try to finish you with only an hour left on sanc, not knowing that you just doubled your health.
Even with a perfect strategy, its not a fight in your favor when you are a warrior fighting an elf pally. The changes to pallies(divine might and divine sacrifice) means that they can probably do more damage than you just hitting each other(it sucks that an elf in decent equipment now hits MUTILATES through sanc/protection), so you have to dirt them, which means they will probably run. The only way you will win is if you can make a large part of the fight happen while they are dirted.

[Hamp]

Ok.. I'm legion well all know who I am.. but anywho, she brings it to the keep every time because that is where I fall every time to her when i don't get away. What am I supposed to do there just let her take the item? Can't do that so I go, she wraths and curses me so I can't word away, flee's every time she is dirted and hard with giant dex to bash the wench. I know about fighting on my terms and where I want. Soluminus taught me about that, but you can't when you have to go defend. If I fight her else where i do alot better but she brings it to my keep. Eh, she's just hard to fight any one else I hold my own against and do very well.

[marsd]

dirt flee sleep, since you're a legion, you don't have to worry about stances lol. everyone'll try to run off sanc, purples etc. so don't quaff until you're 4 rooms away from attacking

[sweet_canadian_mullet]

Marsd that made very very little sense. Im baffled.

[Rezakhan]

The keep actually is a good place to fight--just make sure you know what every room is called. The main area of it is not that large, so once you get them dirted, you should be able to get a few bashes in. Make sure you time your dirt to be near the beginning of a tick.
Also, though its not my favorite strategy, if someone attacks the cabal you can always run back and forth between the guardian, and hope to catch them fighting the guardian.

[Jerold]

One of the reasons she is beating you is because you are allowing her time to heal and return. Elves are hard to track with the sneak, so make sure you are not getting worn down slowly. Stock up like mad on healing things. Ask Malikoar what kind of stuff was in Renzels hole. You should have the same items. And stop your friggin bashing unless you know you have her beat. Some might disagree on that philosophy but it works the same with thieves. Elves are hard to hit and more often than not you are just wrath bait or allowing her a 3 round head start on fleeing, especially with their luck advantages. Some people can only pk if they are lagging their opponent, you are going to have to learn to kill Naugroth-style and chase them down. Besides, you KNOW she is gunning for you when she sees you on, so you know where she is going and what her intentions are. You should be able to think up some kind of ambush. Everyone gets caught snoozing once in awhile. And kill that stallion first. I think that was the stupidest thing put in the game. It's rediculous how buff that horse is.

Adapt or die.

[You_know]

The Legions solid shadow is pretty buff too.

[Louis]

1) do everything you can to fight when his/her sanc runs out. you know around how many hours it lasts at 50, think about it.

2) gangbang with mobs or everyone bashing. it works!

if you are too impatient to wait until the paly brings the fight to you, that is. if there's one thing palys are weak against, its bash and sucky eq. sucky eq for elf pals means about 650 to 700 hp.

with my elf pal i would never use wrath against fire warriors in fight (i'd only use it to initiate) because of the possibility of getting bashed.

[Allie]

1.) Jerold made some very interesting and very true remarks. You know im going to gun for you, and You know where Im going to go. Use that to your advantage.
2.) Carry more than 10 purple potions, because im going to run my ass off wasting yours. Also carry enough healing items to outlast my mana.
3.) Your only going to be able to win by outdamaging my wrath with your physical attack. 3a.) A blind paladin is a dead paladin 3b.) Paladin's only know four weapons(What a fudging atrocity); try dual wielding something I dont know.(I think whips would kick my ass pretty good, personally)
4.) Dont keep lagging yourself by using bash, its stupid, and pointless. Your only going to hit me 1/3 of the time unless your hasted; missed bash lag= two free wraths. (also, I only use horse like 1/2 time, so stop bitching)
5.) I never put much stock into shield disarm, but it sucks when charmies/dupes land it, and itll probably clench a fight for you if you can lag me without a shield.
6.)If all else fails, Gangbang.
7.) But under any circumstances do not quit out when I attack your cabal. Thats just gay.

[Rezakhan]

A minor point, but as a warrior, I wouldnt recommend trying to take out the stallion unless you have an absolute ton of healing stuff(meaning enough to heal you fully at least twice, with some left over). If the pally sancs the stallion(which is likely) it will take a warrior quite a bit of time to kill one, while the pally in the meantime is wrathing happily along.
Also, Allie says carry enough healing items to outlast her mana--with the fact pallies have trance now as well, you are highly unlikely to outlast an elf as a warrior, regardless of how many potions/healing items you have. Elves have high mana,and with the sneak and ability to flee pretty well, if you lost them long enough for them to catch even one tick, they can get back a solid chunk of mana.
One further suggestion--if you are quick enough, once you dirt, if the pally stays in the fight, instead of bashing, try a flee and return attack strategy. This can be effective if the battles been going for a while and you are somewhat hurt, since your opponent is more likely to stay in battle dirted then while trying to finish you off. If you get it right, you can get in a whole extra round of attacks(or even more) before your opponent even knows whats happening, particularly if they are busy trying to wrath.

P.S.--Whoever suggested a solid shadow being anywhere near as buff as the stallions is flat out wrong. I would take an additional uber-defense over more power anyday.

[Hamp]

Yeah trying to have enough healing things just isn't going to happen unless I don't carry anything else. I won't go to a fight unless I have more than ten purples usually. I use axes which paladins don't know still no effect, I only bash you after I have dirted you most of the time unless I"m hasted then it only takes bash. A gang bang is about all I can get you with. When I left I went to defend twice and got my ass handed to me and I had to go to work. I'm not going to keep going back to the keep time and time again to defend anywho just to run away again, it's pointless. It would be better for me for you to get the skull then bash the hell out of you. Not that I should let you get it but I can't stop it. The guardian is a wonderful thing when you can hit a bash.. she's killed me at the guardian with more than half her life left, bash doesn't hit enough. I've been a Knight as well and Stallions are far better than shadows. While on one it is close to impossible to get hit and they do a little damage themselves. Throw stallions are way and you can get some shadows. With Groq it would take about five good rounds if not more to kill a stallion, I can't afford that many rounds.

[marsd]

[b00mslang]

Yeah I've got a serious problem with elf pallies too. Though I've never died to one fighting alone, I can never seem to kill them, and normally its me having to run away. First, they're damage is amazing, doing mutilates through sanc/protection, even after they've sacrificed half of their equipment for tantalum/blue steel, and if they've got good eq like globes and such, then even more damage. The thing is, it takes me like 20 tries even with a hysteria at 95 to land it, similarly with dispel magic.
Basically, I can hardly land any spells, and in most battles I don't even land hysteria once. Same thing with dispel magic. Any suggestions for shaman vs paladin?

I know the blasphemy strategy, but without faerie fire, it's near impossible to kill an elf pally just running for her life.

[Davairus]

There's little reason you shouldn't be having problems with that whacked mana regen they now have, and super damage they now do (even on neutrals), and of course wrath damage no longer has diminishing returns on weaker hp targets. We are going to fix that, when we get around to properly analysing paladins.. our attention hasn't rolled around to focus onto that class yet. Keep in mind that paladins (as well as other classes) have had problems from other skills in the game being too buff, and especially in the case of warriors, eq thats too buff - there's a number of things to be fixed.

The old way as far as I remember was to wear the paladin out .. his mana is pretty valuable to him, but his regen is extremely poor. That combined with a limited weapon selection made paladins kinda gimpy but strong if applied the right way. Since that's not necessarily as true any more (big regen and lots of available weapons making their limited weapon selection more than adequate), it looks like you'll have to go in for bruteforce.

method 1

-maximize your damage (obviously haste explodes this off the charts right now)
-maximize your chance to hit him, so you can land that damage more often
-stop him curing health back

Non-warlord can have berserk up at all times.. not much reason not to do that with the flight potions. Thats a big boost to hitroll and damroll. Dirt kick to ruin his defences (and keep him that way), and then disarm/shield disarm to completely remove them. Getting rid of the shield is higher priority unless the weapon he's using is hitting a vuln, because that will be the stronger defence. You are using a foreign weapon right? After that, you need to land bash enough to stop him using that infinite mana pool to save himself.

method 2

Run until sanc falls and then catch him with a bash chain. This is how the warlords usually beat the newbs, er, the paladins, with their stance taking a while to wear off. Kind of hard for a non-warlord warrior to do this though, especially an evil one, but a fire giant has the best bash in the game so if anyone can.. he can. I think you're going to have to accept that its a difficult fight to some extent, if you're an evil fighting a paladin. But certainly its not completely a matter of the player not knowing what to do at present, there's some good sound reasons to be annoyed about the class.

It should still be possible to avoid outright defeat, because the paladin doesn't have a lag skill - but learn the loops and use them instead of burning through all your potions too fast.. the tables have turned and so its paladins who can play the "wearing em down" game best by far, rather than being just the difficult struggle with their long sanc/cure crit combo until they ran dry that it used to be.

[Mendek]

Very few non-warlord fire giants ever gave my paladins trouble, other than crazy mass damage fire giants like Ugula, Azhag, Grog, etc.

I think everyone agrees that Warriors could use something more after 35 and paladins are just too buff. Wrath used to do puny damage if your opponent was at pretty hurt or aweful, like low caps.

With an elf's high dex they aren't going to be easy to bash and they'll be flying so you can't trip. They have counter so you can't murder if they aren't blind. Hmm... wow, raw deal there.

[Hamp]

It is a bit ridiculous that if they can catch me without sanctuary, which is a rarety, it takes about four wraths to end me.. or less. Depending on whether they get good rounds in between the wraths. You can't lag long enough usually either. Eleanor has killed me with only being pretty hurt at the Shadow Demon.

[Vertas]

Just to let you know, elf paladins kick you know what!
the only reason why Vertas sucked...
1. I was lawful therefor I was like, oh shoot I'm being attacked I better flee outside of town so I can use turn undead and kill his charmies.

NEVER MAKE A LAWFUL PALADIN! Elves learn the fastest out of all the races. You should see how fast your skills climb with a 25 int and 50 quests. I know of 80 now, so I wonder if I would have mastered wrath after all... Also, if a paladin is aggressive, then you have a better chance of winning.

you see a necromancer. Turn undead! good bye charmies, then flamestrike! use holy avenger against illithids, four times normal damage! *2 slicing *2 evil. Easy as pie! Why couldn't I have known this earlier?

[Davairus]

Umm, just incase anybody read Vertas' ramble just now, its actually not that great an idea to try to tank a necro with turn undead. Zombies have huge amounts of health, and turn undead has a long recovery time, meaning the necro can easily flee behind his army when you do it - then he'll autoassist and start spamming acid/dispel magic or something. If you want to kill a necromancer with a paladin, you have to wrath him, and try to avoid fighting his zombies. i.e. focus on the necro, he's the vulnerable spot. For best results, flee around the streets and wait out his sanc, to wrath him when its dropped.