Arena challenge discussion

[Grey]

I kinda wanted to wait for Grey to chime in with his usual nonsense,
but I suppose he's in the drunk tank again.

Nice to see you care, seal-murderer... I was out celebrating getting a new job actually. It may or may not have involved heavy drinking :P

I like the competition idea. Personally I would have suggested everyone gets 3 tries, and must use 3 different races and classes. That way we can all have fun with good and bad chars.

Dunno what to use for mine... Tempted by drakeling thief or dark elven merchant, but lack of healing is a bummer. Elementalist could be cool.

Regardless, it does look like JellySlayer's 39 fights will be a tough one to beat.

[vogonpoet]

JellySlayer already took my R/C combo of choice, so I guess I shall go with a different flavour of mindcrafter...

Incidentally, could someone else chime in on extreme corruption question in my Filk-mindcrafter thread?

[gut]

I have just decided what I want for the second arena challenge
format. Here's the pitch: Let us separate the classes into
strong/average/weak, and everyone plays one of each. We can't
just use the adompossible rankings, as they were ordered for a
specific challenge (darwin run through SMC). I say we pick 5
stong, 10 average, and 5 weak.

I will list my rankings for this challenge, and if you like the
idea, feel free to post your rankings. Hopefully we can reach
concensus by the 19th

Strong: archer, priest, wizard, barbarian, druid
Average: healer, assasin, beasty, elementalist, necro (no slaves), mindy, ranger, monk, fighter, paladin
Weak: bard (no pets), thief, farmer, merchant, weaponsmith

[Dudley]

Just a quick note : gnomes starting this challenges may have an heir gift, which, while not worth for a real game, may be significant here. I'm thinking about assassins, fighters (the eternium girdle is +5PV!!!), healers (same comment about them as for fighters) and wizards (30 charges on a wand of fire is plentiful for this challenge)
So i'd actually rank like this :
Strong: archer, fighter, healer, wizards, barbarian
Average : assasin, beasty, elementalist, necro (no slaves), mindy, ranger, monk, paladin, priest, druid
Weak: bard (no pets), thief, farmer, merchant, weaponsmith

[vogonpoet]

Just for sake of not arguing, I shall almost agree with gut's ordering, but I can't agree with merchants being weak (hell, if I can win the gladius with a blinger, anyone can), so I will switch merchants for paladins, cos I totally suck at paladins and never know what they are

Strong: archer, priest, wizard, barbarian, druid
Average: healer, assasin, , elementalist, necro (no slaves), mindy, ranger, monk, fighter, merchant
Weak: bard (no pets), thief, farmer, paladin, weaponsmith

[meh]

I'd include elementalists as a strong class for this challenge because of the guaranteed spells.

[Grey]

Yeah, I'd personally swap elementalists with priests for the challenge. Priests have no guaranteed offensive spell, and their DIS advantage has little hope of coming in handy in the short time before the arena fight. So I'd go with gut's rankings, but those two swapped round.

[Overheat]

I agree that merchants should not be weak, because that starting stuff could be really useful... As in some rings of cold resistance. Being a troll will fix the problems with merchants for this challenge- aka being weak losers and having no healing.

Bards should be average, because they could get healing/alertness/athletics/other good stuff. Obviously, though, the best way to win without being a caster is a drakeling beastfighter.

[JellySlayer]

Just a quick note : gnomes starting this challenges may have an heir gift, which, while not worth for a real game, may be significant here. I'm thinking about assassins, fighters (the eternium girdle is +5PV!!!), healers (same comment about them as for fighters) and wizards (30 charges on a wand of fire is plentiful for this challenge)
So i'd actually rank like this :
Strong: archer, fighter, healer, wizards, barbarian
Average : assasin, beasty, elementalist, necro (no slaves), mindy, ranger, monk, paladin, priest, druid
Weak: bard (no pets), thief, farmer, merchant, weaponsmith

Gnome fighter with the girdle isn't as impressive as it sounds. A dwarf will still have nearly twice the PV without it.

My rankings:
Strong: archer, wizard, mindcrafter, druid, elementalist
Weak: thief, farmer, bard, merchant, weaponsmith
Average: everyone else

Addendum: being drakeling or troll moves a PC from weak to average, or from average to strong.

[Pumpernickel]

Average: healer, assasin, beasty, elementalist, necro (no slaves), mindy, ranger, monk, fighter, paladin
Weak: bard (no pets), thief, farmer, merchant, weaponsmith

Have i missed something or is there a specific reason for forbidding slaves and pets? As far as i can tell, they won't break the arena: as long as you're facing a single animal foe, music doesn't seem to work at all, and the only way to get slaves inside the arena is creating them in there.

I don't quite get why skills should be banned that are by my estimate barely as useful as ventriloquism and much less of a game-breaker than magic spells or invisibility or invisible-naming. If i'm overlooking something glaringly obvious, please educate me.