This is going to be a somewhat long post.
Hellion class is ridiculously advanced
First and foremost this class is ridiculous in the amount of minmaxing that is required to play it. Every single stat is required to play it effectively, and even given a good build a great player will only be average in competition to the rest of the classes in the game. This class is very heavily reliant on stat mods. It's also very reliant on maxing out art. I feel that if you do not max out the art stat that you simply have built your hellion wrong, and I don't like saying that. I like to tinker with different builds, but the bread and butter of this class is maledictions, and if they're not taking effect then you're wasting your time playing this class.If you die, it's going to take a while to be competitive
again given that you absolutely have to mod something. Given the difficulty of the
class in that respect alone it just doesn't stack up.
1. Tank hellion
I'm not asking for some godlike being here, but no one plays a tank hellion. It's easy to see why. Most of the game is heavily biased, especially in the late game PvE, to favoring the white aura counterpart, the paladin. Protection only helps against things that are of opposite aura. Given that hellions have one of the highest base HPs, can wear heavy armor and have quite a few martial skills that help mitigate melee damage it's sad to see that there aren't more areas where dark aura protection would come into play.
They also lack the rescue skill, and while I think it could be argued that the weak don't need rescuing, it should also be argued that since the hellion wants to be the toughest SOB on the field, he'd relish in pitting himself against things that want to kill him. Given that hellions really do want to show their might in all things, this is one area that they are sorely lacking. I'm not saying that any spells need to be added to the class, I'm just saying that rescue and more PvE areas where the hellion's protection spell would shine would be nice. It's always been that hellions have been relegated to playing 2nd row support.
2. Bad spells
I'm only going to talk about 2 spells here, but they are so bad they need to be mentioned.
Plague is a journeyman level malediction class spell. Herein is the first problem. The rest of the maledictions are amateur to apprentice. Supposedly this spell should be more powerful than them. However, all the other maledictions completely blow this one out of the water. All of them can be cast in under a round, and do something useful. Plague is a three round cast with a higher mana cost, 2 round casting time, and the lowest penalty out of any malediction. It can be stacked like poison, but there are better things a hellion can be doing, like casting cause critical or hellfire, or using another malediction that is far useful. Plague only reduces dexterity by 3 points with every stack, and takes the same amount of time to cast as petrification. Given that it can also spread back to the caster, it simply isn't worth it to use it. Plague needs its cast time reduced to be on par with other maledictions and needs a little bit of a boost. The once per tick chance to spread to other NPCs and players isn't really anything to write home about, and honestly is more of a con than it is a pro.
Domination is also a terrible spell. Of the 5 races that can be hellion, human, half-elf, deep-elf, dwarf and centaur, most of them do not get over 20 intelligence in their intelligence score. Dwarf has the lowest. Three of them have the same, and deep-elf boasts the highest. Only the deep-elf will have this spell at moderate
concentration. And it's not worth it to play a deep-elf hellion given that your
greatest foe, the paladin will gain bonus damage to that hellion with their signature
spell bolt of glory. For all other races, it will be heavy concentration, which leads
to the spell not even being worth casting. If you get hit by any spell that causes
major damage, enough to cause disruptions in concentration, the hellion will be losing
this spell, and will end up fighting the NPC they had dominated on top of whatever the
hellion was fighting to begin with. This is a strategically bad maneuver. It also
makes it very difficult to cast other spells if you have any other spells like
protection, detect invis, or detect hidden in use. It needs to be lowered to be
moderate concentration at 20 intelligence.
Also given that it requires the NPC that's being dominated be 15 levels lower, some of
the charisma requirements for some of the better NPCs to be dominated, and the fact
that if you do not have those levels of charisma, those NPCs cannot be dominated no
matter how high the hellion's art is leaves a lot to be desired. Also, once dominated,
a NPC loses any awesome racial benefits. There's really no reason to try to dominate
anything other than the thuggish humans in Teron, because well, even if you have the
charisma requirements to dominate something "better", you're not really getting
anything for your effort, or whatever race you chose.
It really needs contrasted with what the paladin gets at mentor, holy word. Holy word
is an awesome spell that will help the paladin fight evil. It'll effect anyone in the
room that is evil, doing a good portion of damage, and making a dispel against those
evil people, which is a huge bonus.
Domination, the pros. You get someone to help fight with you.
The cons: This spell can easily be turned against you via massive damage, dispel
magic, remove compulsion, or if you choose to fight in the front row, because you're
trying to roleplay as being someone who is really strong your concentration can be
overloaded by too many opponents. It can also make it difficult to cast your own
spells in combat. For all intents and purposes, using domination at all is practically
a death sentence. It gives a charisma penalty to the dominated. Dominated
swashbucklers are going to be less effective. There's no "cool features" to be
exploited with this spell. Why go explore for that cool dominate that maybe only you'd
know about, if the best you can do is already in a starting city?
I would not ever recommend anyone ever use this spell. It's not an answer to holy
word. The drawbacks are so significant that it's not worth it. Given that it's a bad
idea to invest in a creature to dominate, and that hellions in the front row are a
terrible idea, it practically forces a hellion to join a tribunal. This spell is just not good enough to merit the drawbacks it has. The concentration needs lowered to moderate at 20 int and it shouldn't shut off beneficial racial attributes.
3. Invis, hide and sneak
Hellions have a different sense of honor than paladins because they're evil. They're
the guys that wake you up, tell you that they're going to kill you, and then kill you.
You know, because they're nice like that. However, it's kind of pointless when just
about every starting city sells potions of detect invis, detect hidden. No one is
going to be scared of a hellion coming for them because it's easy to get a counter to
their stealth abilities.
4. Duels against paladins
Examining the paladin and hellion's skills and spells, it's obvious that in a dueling
environment, the paladin enjoys a huge advantage. The paladin has a better defensive
spell set with armor, protection, and sanctuary. They also get cure spells to restore
lost HPs.
The hellion is utterly reliant on his maledictions to weaken the paladin's offense,
while at the same time needing to output a severe amount of damage to overcome both
protection and sanctuary's damage mitigation bonuses. The paladin doesn't have to do
near as much work considering that his melee is only going to be reduced by the
hellion's protection spell. The spell damage mitigation of shield is also not that
impressive. Maybe if magical protection worked by reducing things by a percentage it'd
be okay, but it doesn't, or if it reduced more damage than it does currently, I'd like
it, but protection+shield does not stack up to the greater combo of protection
+sanctuary.
Honestly I feel that paladins could stand to lose sanctuary just to even things up a
bit. No one has complained about hellions being damage sponges, or surviving recites
of triple finger of death and triple harm scrolls. Paladins, on the other hand, have
routinely survived those exact things. It's probably best left to priests and shamans.
5. Other classes do the same things better
If you want to play a class that does maledictions, you're better served playing a shaman. You'll lose poison and plague, but it's not worth getting bothered over especially when you pick up sleep and slow in exchange. Shaman also is a better tank than hellion, and they're casters.
If you want to play melee then play a merc, barb, or swash. The hybridization of spellcaster and warrior just doesn't work that well with the hellion as it does with the paladin. The paladin is better to have in a group, she can play the tank, or go 2nd row and play a healer and cast sanctuary on other people.
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