Several questions about Blackguards

[Pete Mack]

Hey, you'll get better gold after all those 9-headed hydras finally stop multiplying.

[Estie]

Anything but yet another level drainer.

[ewert]

You want to make hydras even MORE annoying? XD

[Estie]

Hydras grow additional heads - what about a chance for a hydra to turn into the next highest type when hit ?

[Sky]

i have weapons that do 300 damage but am stuck with a helm of intelligence +1 and a mace of slay something that does 130 damage, with fairly high stats, since i've been grinding.
I have used a bunch of DD and am at DL31 and i can barely resist a few rounds on the level before i have to recall.

oh yeah, and hydras now DRAIN XP. Because notoriously hydras are undead.

[Pete Mack]

@sky--
That is 50% less formal melee damage than my cl 30 mage, so I'd say it's extremely bad luck.

[PowerDiver]

omg i am playing a blackguard right now because i thought i would rub it in yo' face on how easy they are to win with, but JESUS. it's like someone thought "hey wouldn't it be hilarious if we took a warrior but made him garbage at fighting and gave him nothing in exchange".
CL30 and i do 30 damage .. YES not 300, but THIRTY.

How deep are you? I could barely survive to ?recall when I got down to 1300', so I kind of started over, taking the stairs down from town and everything was easy the second time around.

Blackguards are utterly ridiculous in the second half of the game. They would be overpowered compared to a fighter after stat gain even without any of the spells in the dungeon spellbook.

[Ed_47569]

There is nothing radical about that, that is the old accepted way, lol.

There seemed to be a change in armor usefulness at one point, you are talking based on old gaming style, nothing wrong with that, but that style doesn't make armor useless.

The difference is there for melee characters. You won't be killing the tough mobs soon or without massive resource use if you can only hit them once before you need to flee to heal ...

As I almost always play warriors, I aim for AC of at least 150 by the end game - preferably 200 if possible. I won't sacrifice speed, stat boosts or resistances to get it slightly higher, though.

Mages and ranged classes can forget about AC entirely.

[Pete Mack]

@Sky--
You say that now... But at CL 20 you will get 2 blows with *any* weapon against all adjacent monsters

[Sky]

omg i am playing a blackguard right now because i thought i would rub it in yo' face on how easy they are to win with, but JESUS. it's like someone thought "hey wouldn't it be hilarious if we took a warrior but made him garbage at fighting and gave him nothing in exchange".
CL30 and i do 30 damage .. YES not 300, but THIRTY.

[ewert]

Well at least from my perspective, the avoid-head-to-head style was always the norm back in the day, nothing radical in my view about it.

My most recent example of the high armour utility was vs Lokkak, usually against Lokkak even a single round in melee tends to mean needing to run to heal. This time I actually had a 50+ AC body armor, and I was a bit surprised I could actually melee a couple rounds. My character wasn't really strong enough otherwise to be at those levels, I left the level as I realized I just couldn't bring him down with the consumables I had even if I phased and my sling of power 20 with +5 ammo, ran out of slow monster charges. XD

This style works nicely with the chars I am currently playing, which are melee heavy str/dex emphasis on char creation. I can carry the heavy stuff, and unless I luck out big time I am doing more dmg in melee than with ranged, so being able to just kill for example as you mentioned Azog comfortably in melee is very nice on consumable usage.

Btw, the best results come from using a wand of stunning and high armor. Anything sub dlvl40 that is a melee enemy tends to be a breeze combining those two. Add slow if they are a real big mean nasty.

[Estie]

Well I have seen many people playing by now, on the live site, in videos or on live streams. I have yet to see anyone not equipping armor pieces without magical properties, so I figured my way must be radical.

Now which tough mobs are you talking about ? It must be before I have found some armor of resistance; so something like Azog maybe ? Armor or no, I am going to use whatever ranged options I have on him, so worst case is me using a couple more phase passes instead of finishing him off in melee.

There is no such thing as a pure melee character; there is only ranged characters, some with a melee option some without.

With "change in armor style", do you mean the increase in base AC for all the different types ? I liked that change, hoping it would make armor class more valuable like in, for example, nethack, where you cant survive without a good amount of it. However, I have come to realize that it would not be enough to increase the effect of armor class, even if you increase the monster melee damage at the same time. You would also have to up the cost of disengaging.

Another game where a very similar thing happened is Diablo. In the original version, Diablo I, AC is vital and you'll equip non-magical body armor with more AC over low AC one with mods. This changed in Diablo II and while many players still pursue a high AC value, it is imo only a matter of prestige, not necessity.

You can win D1 without AC, but it is a challenge. In D2, you will be fine if you completely ignore AC. It is the same with nethack and angband.

[ewert]

There is nothing radical about that, that is the old accepted way, lol.

There seemed to be a change in armor usefulness at one point, you are talking based on old gaming style, nothing wrong with that, but that style doesn't make armor useless.

The difference is there for melee characters. You won't be killing the tough mobs soon or without massive resource use if you can only hit them once before you need to flee to heal ...

[Estie]

I think people really overestimate the value of taking low damage in melee.

Make sure you you dont get slowed down by superfluous armor pieces, read ?phase to get out of trouble and heal up and youll be fine.

I have been in the habit of squelching all "good" armor pieces as found for about a decade. I have yet to regret the decision to adopt this radical way of playing.

[ewert]

I feel people much underestimate the effect of armor at the low levels. Just wearing okay pieces on every slot and a fair body armor, and two rings of prot makes you really tough against low level melee mobs, allowing you to melee stuff early on even with crappy dmg/round.

Heck, I currently am doing half-orc/paladin starts, and sometimes if there is no good weapon at all I actually just start off with armor and fists. XD