Shattered Kingdoms

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.

I have played a hellion to GM. I gave them up because even geared(mostly stats), I didn't have much uses. Delf has the Int for Dominate but not the Cha for a half decent NPC. Although it doesn't solve the issues, I always thought Paladin/hellions should get fourth attack since in DND a Paladin is very similar to a Barbarian and Fighter.

I have always wondered why hellions dont have skills that a "dirty" fighter would use, like dirt kick, trip, and disarm.

Were you drunk when you made this post, ardith? The spacing is really weird and seems rambly. Bad copy paste maybe?

That said, I agree on a lot of these counts, specifically the following areas.

1. Hellions should get rescue. They're a heavy armor class without the ability to be a reliable front-row tank because any NPC and/or PC can just reach over them, and there's nothing the hellion can do about it. As Turon I was actually able to tank every now and then, but it was limited to when A) we had a bard or B) none of the NPCs could reach.

2. Plague is awful and should be retooled to be a useful spell. It's casting time especially is way too high.

3. Domination should be either made more powerful or lowered in manacost and/or concentration. It has the same concentration cost and mana drain as charm person, but is notably weaker because you can only dominate NPCs that are level 35 or below. The most useful thing you -used- to be able to do with dominate was charm a low level swash NPC and hope to get lucky with a taunt, but now that charm and dominate lower the charisma, intelligence and concentration of the charmed NPCs, even that's basically a waste of time. The only real thing you can do with it now is dominate a NPC that's going to get 2-3 rounded to maybe give you some time to land maledictions.

I don't agree necessarily that hellions are innately weaker than paladins in duels or that anything is worth doing to that effect, as I view the two classes to be closer than Ardith says. To lend weight to his point, I personally think that the two lightie cabals that paladins can join are generally better in 1v1 duels than the two darkie cabals that a hellion could join, and that's the reason why paladins have the upper hand in most 1v1 duels.


In short, hellions could use some love with rescue, plague, and domination getting added to them. I don't think those are changes that would make hellions anywhere near the best classes in the game, because as Ardith's pointed out, they're extremely difficult to build, play, and gear for, despite having relatively little to show for it. Those changes would, however, show a little love to one of the more RP-intensive classes in the game, and I think that's a good thing.

Hellions get disarm, it's called aim mid cleave.

Dirt kick and trip would be nice for hellions thematically, but I think that would actually be too strong to add to them, even with the recent nerf to trip. In addition, I'm of the mindset that hellions should be encouraged to use their maledictions and spells rather than relying on standard martial skills.

No, I wasn't drunk. I copy and pasted it from notepad. That being said, I don't know why the spacing is messed up halfway through.

Also, I've excluded talking about cabal skills. I'm more interested in the vanilla classes.

As far as vanilla paladin and vanilla hellion go, I feel that the paladin out-edges the hellion. The paladin simply has better utility.

I probably wouldn't feel that way if domination wasn't so god awful, though. Guess I should add the ability to rescue so hellions could stop being punks that sit in the 2nd row because eh, why bother when they can reach right past you.

Tripping someone and disarming are not "fighting dirty." However, they do fight dirty in the fact that they don't shy away from using poisons and diseases (lulz at diseases) to harm their enemies. Also they use cloaks of invisibility and hide in the shadows. I don't know why you don't think hellions fight dirty.

I think Phantom's point was that hellions -do- fight dirty, so they should get trip, dirt kick and disarm.

Maybe I was misreading it. In the same breath though, it's a little beneath someone like a dark knight to use tricks like kicking dirt when he can use his sorcery to carry out that same goal.

I also don't really feel that they need trip or disarm either.

Disarming your opponent is meant to render them harmless, or at least at a disadvantage. It's more in line with a paladin's worldview, despite the fact that the code of the game continues with your character wailing on the victim. Disarm the opponent and thereby neutralize the threat. I feel like the hellion's primary goal would be to murder anyone dumb enough to fight them.

It's also kind of a view point like this: If a man and a woman get in a fistfight, no one in their right mind is going to bet on the woman winning. However, a woman holding a rapier would kill a man. She's inherently stronger at that point by merit of having a weapon. Since hellions are pretty much your WWE wrestler talking about how tough they are, they'd rather not be in a position where the other guy doesn't have a weapon, because at that point he's not a threat worth taking seriously. The challenge is beneath him. But they are fighting dirty by merit of casting hexes. If someone is using sorcery to rob you of the gains you got at the gym, blind you, or whatever else, then they're plain and simple fighting dirty.

But wouldn't working out at the gym also increase your constitution and thus your fort save?

So you really just didn't work out hard enough.