Shattered Kingdoms

25 anything is not over rated. Wisdom does more than increase your mana pool. It also increases your willpower and makes it harder for taunt to land, amongst other things.

the toughest paladin for me to gank is Ragnal and he just flat out resists all of my maledictions. I got lucky the last time and landed deafness, but that was pretty much a fluke, I think.

I don't know much about Ragnal's enchants obviously, but it doesn't take much fort to own a hellion's 8 art does it? Although I'm sure the 25 con helps a lot, too.

That is kind of the annoying part about hellions... whereas buffing yourself is more reliable (paladins) than maledicting others. So you have to use doms to outdamage/ground them, which are not only kind of dishonorable for a class reliant on looking tough, but really impractical to hold for anyone but delfves and maybe the Emcee

Eight art is plenty. I only have troubles against people that are highly enchanted, or that are just plain lucky.

And just because he saved against my maledictions, I have still won the last 2 duels with him.

Domination does make them look tough. 2 > 1. But domination is completely useless in PvP against any opponent with half a wit. Any shaman can rape a hellion by casting frenzy on them and instantly turning their slave against them no questions asked. The extreme concentration requirements also make the spell useless if a swashbuckler comes into play.

These are some of the reasons why I think that that spell in particular is simply unviable in a PvP environment. It's already got a severe level limitation on what can be charmed and what cannot, but it also completely rapes the concentration of hellions. In fact I think it is the most concentration heavy spell in the game since it doesn't drop down to moderate until 22 int is achieved.

Outside of PvP though, the spell rocks. Hellion is one of the most spoiled classes because of it. I just wish it were more viable inside of killing other player characters.

I guess hellfire can make up for it somewhat against lighties, since people tend to have bad reflex saves. I have to say though, I had always figured that most paladins would beat most hellions. But would you attribute your winning to your character having particularly good resists/eq, too?

But yeah, I would agree dominate is mostly just impractical as hell. You can't regen any mana while you hold it unless you rest, in which case you regen almost nothing (like 5%). Granted I guess this is the price for a class who gets melee attacks and an extra NPC... it's just unfortunate when the price overrides practicality.

Annnd we're off-topic....

Not to mention that disables intimidate.

Hellions that get taunted by swashbucklers make me a sad panda.

The only thing that should screw with a hellion's dominate concentration should be frenzy, IMO, so dominate is really only always bad against shamans.

Why does that make you a sad panda? Taunt is pretty easy to land.

Think about it. It'll come to you.

Domination is a necessity for any hellion who plans on pking solo imo.

I suppose you're suggesting the hellion deafen himself before fighting a swashbuckler?

That idea really only has merit if the hellion + his dominate can take a swashbuckler in melee combat. I'm not so sure if the majority of them can.