Hai gaiz! I'm new to Lusty, even though I've played other IREs before. One of my friends convinced me to come try it out, and I gotta say, after looking through the website, I'm hooked. There are just so many cool things in this game, and I can't wait to get into them. That said, I could use some help picking a class, and I hope you guys can help me.

Combat has always been one of my favorite parts of the IREs. I know better than to ask which is the most powerful class 1v1, since they're generally pretty balanced, and plus that's not really a big deal for me. What I'm really looking for is a class that does well when fighting against uneven odds. Some of the biggest rushes for me in the other games was when my smaller group fought a larger group, or when I took on more than one person by myself. Most of these situations tend to end in a loss, but man did they give a high.

So! Imagine that you're alone and you're put up against two opponents of lesser skill (because you're pretty much boned anyway if they're the same skill level as you). Say, your opponents are people who've bought a decent system and know something about launching an offense, even if they're not the best at it. What would your ideal class be in this fight?

I've looked through some of Lusternia's skills and there are a bunch of classes that seem to fit the bill, at least to my inexperienced eye. The first seems to be any guild that has access to choke, since it seems like a pretty powerful mechanic that could kill systems not prepared to handle it, and the advantage is magnified when there are more of them than there are of you because it affects everyone in the room. However, the city that I'm thinking about starting in is New Celest, and none of the guilds there have access to choke. Another class that seems strong is mages, with skills like bubble and fleshstone that effectively remove one player from the field, but I'm kinda iffy on the idea of only being able to fight effectively when you're in demesne. I like moving around. Finally, warriors seem like a good choice, if only for the fact that they have enough health and defensive abilities to tank more than one opponent, whereas other classes might die just to damage alone.

However, I'm just theorycrafting here since I haven't actually started playing yet. What do you guys think? I would much appreciate any input and suggestions.

Shadowdancer, by a mile. Aquamancers would probably be the next best.

Shadowdancer, Mage or Druid.

Telepathy mages are more than mobile out of demesnes. If you can establish a sizable demesne, you remain perfectly mobile while everyone else is hindered. It's quite nice.

Choke is a difficult mechanic to use. If you're good at combat, Shadowdancers are probably your best bet. It's not an easy class to play well, but it's the most scaleable--a good fighter has more tricks than pretty much any other guild, but a bad fighter is just going to get raped in slow motion. Next on the list is psionic mage. Again, not the easiest style of play, but lots of flexibility. As an added bonus, you aren't going to get obliterated by your own guild skill.

On the other side of the spectrum, the most accessible build is probably a runic druid (either flavor). There is very little flexibility to the combat style, but learning how to fight shouldn't even take a week. If you want to go a step up from there, consider dreamweaving druid (actually less powerful than runes, but better able to exploit failures in your opponent's system and far more flexible) or glamours bard.

To be perfectly honest... it's really not. It's pretty easy to be passable as a Shadowdancer (though it's harder to actually be good as one).

I was looking through combat logs the other day and found a log of Ixion fighting 7 people at once and managing to kill one before escaping with 3000 health.

I was like, holy guacamole. Just on that alone I would venture a guess that warriors aren't too bad a bet. I could be wrong though, maybe Ixion is just OP.

1. He's op.
2. That was a year and a half ago. Anything more than a few months old is pretty unreliable.

Ixion had swords that were unforgeable anymore by anyone at that time. There wasn't much seen of him after pre-nerfed swords were changed.

If you have $1k laying around somewhere, you can arti out a warrior to a degree that's not possible with the other archetypes. Otherwise, they're pretty middling/mediocre, in terms of both skill and potential. Attrition combat has its perks (like, if you don't die, you win), but warrior is not exactly newbie-friendly territory.

Huh, that's interesting to know. I always thought warriors were a strong archetype since almost all of the top fighters that I hear about are warriors. Maybe warrior guilds just tend to attract people who like to beat stuff up.

My artied-out-the-arse druid does a little less than 100 damage extra every four seconds to an unarmored target on account of the artifacts. Those top tier warriors hit faster, hit harder, have quicker attrition, bypass armor, and force the tough choices faster on account of the arties. Almost all of them have high stats from high level human evolution, titan/demigod, or heavy artifacts. It makes a difference.

I.e. Shuyin. Geb. Thoros(though he isn't as heavily artied).

Average Warriors are tanky even when they aren't artied. Though, they aren't anything to be really afraid of offensively. It's the artied out the rear end warriors that tear through cloth wearers like they are newbies. The archetype generally starts the lowest, costs the most to even touch on combat, and should you have the money, by far the most potential to be OP.

Or so the warriors I know tell me.

Thanks for the advice, everyone. It was all very helpful. The Shadowdancers definitely seem to fit the bill, but I'm not too sure about going Glomdoring. From what I've heard, it's a really quiet commune and not a lot of stuff happens there. Is this really the case? Combat is a big draw for me, but I also play MUDs for the social aspects and the RP. Would Glomdoring be a good place to go for that?

Glomdoring can be quiet, though like any org, if you want the RP, you need to look for it. There isn't a lot of chatter over the aethers, though there is good RP to be found. Discussions happen - but, in turn, there isn't much tolerance for nonsense and blabber that isn't of much value or worth other than for the sake of nonsense. You just need to know whom to talk to.

Glomdoring has the most interesting history out of the other orgs, so I think, and that was the draw for me. If you want to hear more about the RP though, and whom is good from what groups and style of RP, send me a PM and I can rattle off a list for you.

I've made alts in pretty much every guild in the game, because I'm like that, and strangely enough, I've had the best newbie experience in Glomdoring, bar none. That really surprised me given what I've heard about it before. People there actually check up on you individually via tells, which I haven't seen in any other org. Big cities like Celest may have a lot more people, but there were times where I've asked a question on the Academy channel and there wasn't a single response despite there being 6 professors on plane. Of course, that happens in Glom too, but when it does, it's usually because there's no one around. I don't know what it's like there after you graduate newbiehood, but the novice experience was definitely very nice.

Oh wait, I'm still an enemy to Glom. Down with Glomdoring!

Combat is a lot slower in Glomdoring than the other organizations. The conflict level is usually a lot lower, not a lot of raids and defences, if you want combat you usually have to make your own, or organize your own. Their are a few who want to increase the level of conflict and like to raid, Pentu, Daem, Synl, and Luxi to name a couple. Probably a few others who I'm forgetting, if you talk to them you could probably start helping to get some going.

If you want reliable continuous conflict though Cities are the way to go usually.

After novicehood there's less general checking in on, though I don't think that any of the guilds discourage still asking questions or for help, nor the commune in general. Those that checked in on you as a student/novice are still more than happy to help even after, if you approach them.

Actually, Bard guilds from Seren, Glom, and Mag always check up on their novices - that, I think, is a huge reason why the Spiritsingers reached near-top in TOPGUILDS. As for the Cantors...well, I've yet to catch one in-game

Go Aqua!