Shattered Kingdoms

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Yeah I think hellions need a relook at. Even things in the hellion code don't match up with their skill set, like sneak, and hide. Plus domination is just a waste of a spell for a hellion because no one ever really uses it. And honestly a paladin could take down any hellion no matter who plays them as long as that paladin is played by someone who knows what they are doing.

But hey hellions have always been a class that needed looked at.

Even cleave is not a end all attack all the time.

I think you make a point in that darkies need something, but I don't think it comes in the form of a hellion buff. Rather, I think the Crucible skillset needs a few minor tweaks in a serious way that would benefit the hellion class (along with other classes).

Crucible spells are negligible in PK and irrelevant to PvE.

give them wither

I would recommend letting intimidation give them protection akin to sanc if someone breaks through.

Would giving them fourth attack make them stronger?

Most weapons worth cleaving with (massives) wont yield four hits a round without fury or spec.

After more thought, giving hellions fourth attack would make sense and help the class a great deal.

Good! Kneel down to the great wisdom of Dimbles!

@dulrik

This is intended to help forge a discussion. Forgive any misassumptions in my starting points. I am proceeding based on my experience and memory (or lack of). I want to compare a paladin and hellion in a duel.

Precombat
If you look at buffs, hellions get shield and protection, while paladins get armor, bless, protection, frenzy, and sanctuary to use. Other precombat preparation that the hellion may consider is casting maledictions on their blade. There are 4: curse, weaken, poison, and plague. Each of the 4 malediction transmission success rate can be diminished by having consecrated/enchanted gear. For curse and plague, the paladin has a spell to remove those effects. Committing to placing these two maledictions are likely to result in the hellion expending more mana than the paladin to clear them.

Initiating Combat
Hellions can cleave or cast hellfire. The precombat buffs and armor preparation will likely have diminished the effectiveness of either. Paladin is a one-trick pony on Bolt of Glory, but they'd rather be attacked for the damage reduction of their sanctuary spell to hold.

Combat Tricks and Damage
Hellions and paladins each get three attacks, shield block, parry, and dodge. The paladin get access to disarm. I can't say which spell causes more damage, but BoG always scared me more than Hellfire in these situations. The spells that the Hellion has access to that can cause negative effects are: blindness, deafness, curse, plague, weaken, poison, and chill touch. Of this list, the paladin can't directly remove poison, weaken, and chill touch. I feel like the strength penalty from chill touch isn't consistent enough to pursue in a duel, but maybe poison and weaken are worth a shot in the precombat weapon preparation. The paladin can limit the success of the hellion by appropriately preparing their armor. The same can be said about the damage from the cause spells and maybe hellfire.

Sidebar
There is a misconceptions about the relationship between spells like blindness and cure blindness. These seemingly opposite spells are not equal. If blindness costs 8 mana and cure blindness cost 8 mana, the caster of blindness is likely at a disadvantage. The paladin may expend no mana if the spell doesn't succeed, but the hellion who is depending on this effect to get an advantage may blow all their mana to get no advantage or a limited advantage that will be wiped away rather easily. This issue exists with cause light and cure light. You cast cause light twice to get it to land once. They negate its effect with one cure light, which they wont resist unless they are wearing MR gear.

Conclusion
Based on the details above, I am lead to believe that the paladin is generally advantaged in a duel. If the character builds are comparable, the paladin's position improves as the combat goes longer and the hellion feverously burns up his mana on less impactful spells. The hellion needs to win quickly (preferably with a great deal of help from cleave). The maledictions appear to be unreliable expenditures of mana. If the paladin has heal vials, the hellion should consider sepuku and save everyone the effort.

Other
From the standpoint of utility, the paladin seems to be again advantaged for PvE exploration. He can heal effects that tend to be a big hinderance. The hellion can cast maledictions toward enemies that will resist the effects. Paladin can create food and water, has access to 4 damage spells: spear of faith (aura matters), BoG(wreck target necro, hellion, or undead), flamestrike (Ranged spell that hits an entire team for a low, low cost), Holy Word (thank the gods it is so expensive). Call armor allowing them to recover from their mistakes easily. Finally, the choice between consecrate armor (making it that much easier to develop the protection necessary to make life harder for a hellion) versus consecrate weapon. I believe consecrate armor is far better. The hellion's can hide, sneak, and go invisible. The hellion can also intimidate weaklings and dominate folks that are much weaker than themselves. I haven't fully explored domination to know what perks are hidden there. I think that the paladin is better than the hellion.

What to Do
1. Do Nothing. With the low number of players, I guess people can steer away from less desirable classes, but some players really love this type of roleplay. Maybe the hellion can sneakily/hidden/invisibly get the drop on someone, but where's the honor in that.

2. Fourth Attack I've seen people talk about getting a fourth attack. I don't know how good that will do. Cleave requires specific types of weapons that tend to be pretty slow. Dwarf hellions really enjoy it with a great big axe, but I'm not certain that other weapons will likely take advantage of this. This would also require access to the code to make that kind of change. Generally speaking, the only folks with 4 attacks are the warriors. The increased DPS may make a difference in longer fights.

3. Leverage restricted, scripted items This likely could be done without code. I'm not exactly certain how difficult this would be to implement, but I believe there are items that depend on the characteristics (alignment, class, religion) of the character for certain extra effects. If more/stronger effects were available for classes that seem underpowered, were restricted to certain classes, and were greatly hoarding resistant, it could be used as a way to experiment with class balancing.

Feel free to tell me about any misunderstandings that I spoke on and share any thoughts that conflict with what I listed. I'm trying to learn and contribute.

Carlos