Greetings to everyone. I'm somewhat new to Lusternia, though I have a solid overall IRE MUDs experience. I'm heavily interested in PvP combat here, and after making some characters and vivisecting some logs, I have a few questions to the veterans of the Basin. What I dislike the most, is the one-sidedness of the combat strategies of certain classes. If the class has two-three possible combos which you should use over and over again, doesn't matter how powerful they are - it's not the choice. I want a class, that provides versatility and potential, so you may discover a combination than no one uses and even make it work! After thorough examination I chose three classes over all the others and now I would like to know a bit more about them.

1. Warrior. From the first glance, I found this class the most versatile in the whole game - lots of wounds/venoms combinations, nice side effects (I love the BC stun!), etc. But after parsing some warrior logs, I see just a few patterns the renown combatants use. BCs go for Knockdown to stop stancing/parrying followed by smites to get BashBrains. Pureblades do almost the same with LegTendon + Behead. Well, I simplify things a bit, but from what I can see, warrior combat is all about forging/runing a decent weapon, making target prone/unable to parry/stance and going for critical head wounds instakill. Chances to miss make different combos hard to pull off reliably as well. Also, if not in a duel, it's quite easy just to run from a warrior to heal wounds/retreat completely as they don't seem to have much hindering at their disposal.

2. Blacktalon. From the logs/skill lists, I can see a lot of potential with this class. With correct timing, it seems it's not that hard to stick sap on the foe for long enough to completely screw him up, and the initial lock can be achieved using a lot of different approaches. Dreamweaving, with embedded and active blackout(!)/epilepsy/daydreaming adds even more flavour. What concerns me (except the case I'm completely mistaken and Blacktalon combat is not fun at all) is Trueheal and artifact soap. Trueheal completely negates the Sleep- and Sap-kill approaches, but let this aside. That's an incredibly powerful skill, if you ask me, but I think it's possible to develop some kind of work-around, and even if it's not possible, let them Trueheal and run, that's a sign of you winning the fight after all :) But it seems a lot of people here have artifact soap. Is it really possible to Sap-lock someone who uses the bar of one? Is it really possible to kill without Sap?

3. Shadowdancer. This class also seems a lot of fun to me. But again, from the logs I can see it comes down to mess-them-up and damage/toadcurse. It would be good enough, if you had the "mess-them-up" part complex enough. Is it? Release shadows, burst doublewhammies at the opening to get their system some work, continue with it keeping 5 power at your prompt, Choke at the right moment, Pixie/Sleep/Sleep, Succumb. From that moment the fight is pretty much in your hands and you can go either damage or manakill, depending on circumstances.

Once more, I have no confidence with all what I just said, just some thoughts I've got after reading logs here for a while. So I ask you, experienced fighers, please help me to choose. If my three classes choice lacks some good variants (for instance, Nihilist combat seems interesting as well) - bring it on! And yes, almost forgot. No Celest or Serenwilde guilds. Thank you!

Actually, the post above is mine. I just forgot to log out Nimlot. Apologies for any confusion. Though, the point of the topic hasn't changed a tiny bit :)

Warriors do have multiple ways to kill people, and I try to use different tactics just to keep things interesting. As a Bonecrusher, you can crush someone's chest to run them out of endurance, and without endurance there isn't a whole lot left they can do. You can burst their organs (gut wound), and that can kill someone if they don't heal it in time. You can crush their windpipe and hit with senso to make the curing a bit more difficult (though not impossible, by any means). With smart use of calcise and dendroxin, you can get double limb breaks (wound breaks arm, poison breaks leg, for example). Maneuvers can be very useful, though a surprising number of warriors just don't understand how to set them up or just plain don't bother with them. The hindering can often times be a problem, too, though that's what knockdown and mantakaya are for.

I would actually not recommend blacktalon for versatility. They have a few different options, but they are limited depending on the tertiary skill you choose. As a dreamweaver, there are only a couple of motes you would ever use. They can be very powerful, but there isn't a lot of variety usually. They're also very squishy, and they are one of the worst classes for hunting.

Warriors are a very good choice for versatility. As Zarquan already said, they have quite a few options.

Overall, I think monks have the most versatility, but they are still in their early stages. The Shofangi have been released in Serenwilde, but there aren't any other monk guilds yet. They are nothing like monks from other IRE games, they were designed from scratch here. Monks can set up their own forms - each form is a set of up to 3 attacks plus extra modifiers. So, I could design my own form to kick the target in the head once and punch him in the head twice, modified to cause concussion, paralysis, and a broken nose. Or, I could make a form to stab both of my shofa into the target's gut, then throw them out of the room in the next form. There are a lot of possibilities. The downside is that our only viable kill condition is damage - our damage scales higher as the target's wounds get higher. So, we employ whatever tactics we can to get a target's body part to high wounds, then beat on it to kill them. A lot of monk skills are still in flux, though, so you would have to put up with the regular changes and with a few skills that don't work correctly yet. You would also be limited to the Serenwilde if you want to go with monks right now, though Celest's will be coming soon.

I personally like to think of Shadowdancers as having four ways to kill someone: nightkiss, toadcurse, nightkiss in choke, and toadcurse in choke. That's also the rough reliability of each, going from least reliable to most reliable.

What a lot of people don't get about the Shadowdancer class is that we really don't HAVE to rely on choke all the time. As a Hexen I regularly killed people with toadcurse and sometimes even with nightkiss without using choke at any point via clever uses of whammies and the like. Of course, this mostly depends on them having subpar curing and against someone with really good curing (Geb and Ceren spring immediately to mind) you probably won't be able to kill them without choke, but it's entirely possible to pull an out-of-choke kill against most of the world. Even as a healer I do get out-of-choke toadcurses a decent amount of time (although it is harder) by using aurawarp/bedevil/succumb.

If you want versatility with the SD class, I suggest hexes because there's really just so many afflictions to play around with. (I'm only a healer because I got bored of hexes after using it for a long time.) Astrology is also neat too because of the way it works and it does give a lot of cool afflictions, and because it's the only way an SD can get access to "normal" aeon, but of course it waxes and wanes in power depending on the day and the person.

If you do become an SD, talk to me sometime and I'll help you out with some more specific tips if you want them.

(As a side note, since no one answered your question about BTs and soap: artifact soap USED to be the Ultimate Artifact of Total Druid Immunity but now it runs on roughly the same restrictions as cleanse so it's basically just an unlimited cleanse enchant.)

Don't forget the extremely common Longnight kill...

I don't know much about BT, I am a Hartstone druid but...

I used to really dislike the Druid class. There for a few weeks all I thought about was what guild I wanted to switch too. But recently, since I started building my system and really getting into combat, I've come to enjoy it a lot more. Of course, combat for us isn't too varied; you mainly try to get sap to stick then bleed them to death, but I have a fun time doing this. Dreamweave is a fun class not only for combat, but also for flavour, I think. I like to roleplay being a dreamweaver, and there are several abilities in that skillset that help you do that.

As a dreamweaver Druid you have several options for helping get sap to stick. Memoryloss and Narcolepsy are especially nice, though I'm only up to 50% Virtuoso, so I can't use narcolepsy yet. And probably won't for a while, since I've taken an interest in the Stag skillset. I see a lot of potential in it being able to spice up combat, and at least make it a little more varied. At trans, it at least adds another way to kill people: Gore.

hrm... longnight is a coven skill that requires 13 people to use and prevents everyone, including the dancer, from using power feats. nothing more. and seeing as how every combination shamarah listed used power in some form...

Either he was being sarcastic, or he was referring to an unbreakable demesne (which isn't a guaranteed kill, or something you can do solo).

No, she was pretty much joking.

*cough* Yes. She.

even if he was being sarcastic, for someone that doesn't know... it can easily be taken as fact and therefore false hope! and i've only seen one time, one, where glom has had enough people to even use that skill. (not like we did)

my thoughts on warriors tho so i can be more useful....

bonecrushers are likely the best of the bunch, even inside choke if you go ebonguard. the mentioned knockdown/paralysis is by and by the "official" newbie killer within the realms. they always have a double shot at poisons and with stun there are almost limitless combinations that can be somewhat effective. they can stun in three locations, have two bodypart wounding instakills, and some very nice afflictions. the only thing is that the best of the afflictions are normally achieved while working on the head towards the bashbrains already

axelords are a very interesting choice and increasingly popular. they share the stunning nature of bonecrushers and with a two handed weapon don't have their offense slowed down at all in choke. (the main benefit is getting in a curing action where the one-hander would simply be swinging again) the usable poisons list, since you only have the chance at one coming off, tend to shrink a bit and you'll find a handful of reliable ones and likely won't stray from them. they have excellent heavy wounds all around with being able to amputate arms and legs. kneecap is a nice affliction to prevent stancing, and severspine can be tricky to track for some people with the paralysis it causes. the kicker here is their execute instakill. you can basically end anyone with simply acquiring wounds and don't need to rely on swinging down and hitting the right body part... and much more neat to pull off. the wounds are spread out over three areas as well, so it'll take some maneuvering to whittle them down

pureblade is the other two-hander and i think THE attrition warfare warrior. if you want to have a circling and testing your opponants' defenses while slowing working to weaken them down fight... this is the spec to do it with. amazing critical wounds across the board, but you'll normally have to work for them. ruptured gut houses amazing potential against anyone beyond other warriors. accumulating hunger against anyone without consciousness or a lot of food is a sure way to victory. on top of that this affliction comes with crazy bleeding... as does everything else in the skillset. the biggest drawback to this spec is the inability to keep people still

blademaster i would say is the least powerful spec one on one, but perhaps the best in group fights. this one specializes in holding people still and letting your group pound on them. holding them still without anyone else there to pound on them doesn't leave it too valuable a tactic. if you're just going to keep pinlegging someone over and over again repeatedly -- you're likely not going to kill them and if you go for stacking rend bleeding, you give them an opportunity to escape. they share tendons with purebladers, and can "impale" in three different areas effectively. collapsed lungs is a nice critical wound, which they again share with purebladers. purebladers have the better lead up affliction to it though. i feel this spec would be much much better one on one if they had a decent critical wound in the arms region. as it stands, all they can really do there is jab with combinations of anatine/niricol and -completely- halt the offense of other warriors there. again though, this won't kill anybody. they're also the weakest inside choke unless you have amazing scimitars and can lunge pinlegs insanely fast.

Oh god, Longnight. What a stupidly designed skill =/

Psh. It's totally worthwhile now that they've lowered it from 50 to 25 shadows!

Totally!

You should try out monks, wait for the non shofangi guild to open. Or hold your breath and go to serenwilde

you can be certain to come up with combos nobody has thought of before, because nobody has used them yet.

You calling me nobody?

Warriors are the most combat-versatile of classes. You saw bonecrushers going for legs + bashbrains, but that works only on novice fighters and people you outmatch skill- and artifact-wise. During normal fights, you have to adjust your strategy on the fly, attacking many bodyparts but STILL focusing on a certain goal, not flaying like a frenzied berserker. Every bodypart has an useful affliction you can hit it with - in BC's case, gut and arms are slightly worse, but a good fighter can still make a great tactic based on them. You also have to KNOW when to swing, when to jab, and when to use maneuvers and when not to - and what kind of maneuvers. Add poisons like a cherry on top.

That's all Estarra would agree to. =/

A note.

Trueheal doesn't actually stop a sleep-saplock, as it doesn't cure tiredness. It means you need to keep them still and then stack up other afflictions again, but they'll still be falling asleep. Dreamweaving Blacktalon are potentially one of the most powerful classes in the game, alongside Dreamweaving Hartstone. Five deepsleeps cripple anyone, unavoidably. I won't go into any more detail, as there's plenty of druidic theory floating around the boards and I can regurgitate even more if for some reason you need the most modern bile.