Shattered Kingdoms

I know Swashies have been bad for a while... what I'm wondering is what happened? When I first started playing, (ages ago) Valthanous, the MC swashie, was pretty much the most badass and feared player on the MUD, PVP-wise. If I recall, he was an MC helf swash, with max HP, suited in a full suit of supernatural skins (before those got thrown out), and he owned. And back in the day, I rolled a swashie and wrecked mercs. Aside from Specs, the gimping (necessary gimping) of haste, and fatigue, what has made swashies so inferior?

In PVP, I die.
In PVE, if I tank, I die. And if I'm the second tank and the tank dies, I die.

Just to have a reference point.

I just recently played a swashie with 5 attacks per round, 6 hasted.

I died faster with that mithril-decked swash than I did with my wild-fighting griffarb. And the swash's passive skills were more fully trained than the barb's.

Just sayin, from my experience, I'm more durable with a wild-fighting griffarb than with a swashie, regardless of the situation.

Wait . . . are you comparing a sprite and a griffon on tankability?

Sprite should out-tank griffon any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

Size tiny > size large
Armoured > naked (and before anyone brings up griffon innate toughness, I'll counter that argument by saying "Toughness, lol.")
25 dex > 21 dex

The only way a griffon out-classes the sprite is in nat con, but their complete lack of armour protection/enchantability above level 25-30 negates that bonus very quickly.

I had a sprite bard who could out-tank most griffons and she wasn't even built to do so, to say nothing of the sprite shaman I just recently deleted.

My dorf barb did better than my griffarb, meaning my dorf barb still died but survived longer wearing heavy armor and a shield than a basically nekkid and weaponless griffarb.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I do not believe you spend any time getting gear enchanted beyond what it comes with. I'm also not sure what weapons you wielded as your sprite and whether or not you made it to stance defensive. I appreciate the desire of some players to just log on and play, mood aggressive all the time, 0 enchants, etc, but that's not indicative of game balance issues. Griffarbs probably are a more durable choice for you because of their natural ruggedness. Other race/class combos need to put in prep work but have much higher upsides as a result.

You're wrong. "What it comes with" is not necessarily how I get it as. Gear of any quality I receive as gifts, and I receive a lotta gifts, from mithril and energy weapons to mithril, energy, adamantite gear.

But your premise is right. I do not usually get any extra enchantments on my gifted gear than as I receive them. I can't afford for them to explode, since I can't replace them. The one char, and only one char, that wore heavily enchanted gear was a priestess who was the most heavily gifted char I ever had. And she wore a pair of bunny slippers with 8 MR plus another 8 enchantments on top. Someone with lots of art from 1 room away couldn't summon her with multiple tries.

But, yes, I do get enchanted gear and especially enchanted weapons (mithril, adamantite, energy). And, no, I'm no good in PVE or PVP. And griffarbs take far too much damage. And sprite swashies take far too much damage.

And I'm still mad that swashies can't dual wield hand-held crossbows from a distance. Makes hand-held crossbows shooting mere darts rather worthless.

Swashie with 2 hand-held crossbows and 300 darts:
3 shots per round (2nd attack plus sprite extra attack).

Any ol' merc with a crossbow:
3 shots per round, possibly 4. Up to 5 if a sprite merc. (is that possible? I don't know.)

Nah, you can't be a sprite merc. Something about heavy armor + size tiny being pretty broken.

Thanks, but you explain that as though I have a backward understanding of how things work.

I don't.

It's still funny to compare sprites and griffons for tankability, for the reasons you mentioned.