Class Question

T

Tylo

Newbie
Hey everybody,

I'm slowly crawling back into Alliance after a long (like, nearly a decade) hiatus. Blame graduate school and my local chapter fizzling. Anyway, having not played in forever, I'm looking at launching a new PC rather than playing my old one, and I find myself stuck on a question of class. So here's my question, and I hope I don't start a flame war on this one: Do you find adventuring groups passing up Fighters?

I ask because I am interested in playing one, but I'm also looking at the same character being an Earth Templar. I think I really would rather focus on fighting this time around (my previous PC was a Scholar, and also I could stand to get a little more exercise), but I'm worried that Fighters get treated as second-best as compared to a class that can also heal or throw alchemy or drop protectives/rituals, especially when you get to higher levels and Templars/Adepts have started packing a decent punch with their swings. Can you drop me any advice? Thanks!
 
Depends on the chapter. Good fighters are in serious demand in NH. We have very few.

I think fighters are absolutely essential, especially for mods. Besides, you can always eventually pick up Read Magic or even Alchemy if you want to be more diverse.
 
Very true, and thank you for the insight. I think my worry is largely based on having played before Fighters got the bennies they have now, and also having mostly been exposed to Earth Templar PCs as my only examples of high-level play. Thinking about it again, I think you're right; if I need to diversify I can pick up the ability to read scrolls or something later on (though, planning to roll a High Orc makes me a little unlikely to pick up ANYTHING that involves reading and writing...that's 4 Critical Attacks worth of Build!)
 
Fighters, at low levels, are absolutely essential. They scale in efficacy faster than nearly any other class, the extra body is a huge advantage, and they're bloody easy to play. Up until early teens - then, they become less useful.

Because of the "KO" advantage of Scholarly and Alchemical skills, the attrition-abilities (hit it until it's dead) drops off quickly in mid-teens and into the 20s. When you're fighting something with 400+ hitpoints, sure the kat swinging 10s will eventually whittle it down, but three-punch Scholar ([defense][defense][dead]) will do it a lot quicker.

Then, in the late 20s, Fighters get back into the game because once they are stacked (high-stacked) with defensives and a proper Scholarly Backpack, the attrition game comes back into vogue. Sure, it will take a long time of swinging 17s to knock out something with 800+ hitpoints, but since there are four or five of 'em and the monster resists are 10+ deep, the limited Scholarly resources just can't bear out the long-game in the same way as "infinite" pipe-swinging. Unfortunately, this also means that only a few dedicated Fighters are needed at high levels because: A) ALL their defense comes from either MIs or Scholars and so most groups focus their resources on a single player; B) Because high level Fighters only advantage is dedicated profs, they tend to be one-trick ponies so outside of combat, they're effectively useless; and C) since they are reliant on other classes for protection and longevity, poorly equipped Fighters can be a huge resource dump.

Not to mention, Fighter character sheets and progression stagnates very quickly. Because a Fighter's main (some would say only) purpose is to soak up damage and increase their Prof count, there is very little room for branching. Every Build choice you make has to be tested against the question "I can only increase my damage every 15 Build, once every Level and a half. If I take this other skill, I'm pushing back the time table for increasing one of my sole uses on the field". Once you get to high levels where you're gaining a Build once every two to three blankets, waiting a Level and half to do anything new gets to be very boring; and since every level gained increases the time it will take to get to the next level, any deviation from the 1.5 levels per prof progression pushes your next field-effective increase down the road exponentially.

So, the long and short of it is, be a Fighter if you don't mind either: A) being a Prof Heavy, heavily Supported, Eventually effective Fighter; or B) don't mind being a "diversified" but innefective Fighter.

All that being said, the above is from a purely "sport" point of view; from a "maximize the curve" standpoint. Good groups/teams choose their players mostly based on ability to work as a team and friendship. Some of the people I've worked and adventured with the longest have had really janked Character Builds and a few were downright silly (Artisans with Pyramids and Backstabs are scary, just sayin). If you're smart and can figure a way to use different tools to your advantage, you will be useful on the field.

And, beyond all that, do what you're going to enjoy. If you wanna swing pipe, do it - forget all the rest and just bash skulls. Spirit Forge, Fluid Class, and new characters all deal with systemic changes if they're desired. If you don't enjoy what you're doing, it's not worth being good at it.
 
When it comes to building a fighter over time, you can go several routes:

You can be "defensives guy," and go "prof-prof-parry-prof-prof-parry-riposte," rinse and repeat. Downside: you have no slays or eviscerates, so it will take a long time to kill some stuff.

You can be "offensives guy," and go "prof-prof-slay-prof-prof-slay-eviscerate," the downside being that if anything ripostes your eviscerate back at you, you're laying down and hoping for a healer in the next 360 seconds.

You can go for a mix, the most standard I see is "prof-prof-slay-parry," up to swinging a nice even number (5s and 10s spring to mind first, then 15s, damage that's quick to calculate) then you go back and buy an eviscerate or two, maybe a riposte.

There has also been the "stun limb, shatter and disarm" guy. He was a beast in one-on-one style combat, because you didn't have enough parries, ripostes and magic armors to deal with what he had. You ended up with 1 limb and no weapons rather fast.

If you want to go with a fighter-based mixed class, go fighter first, then buy read/write, and then Healing Arts or Read Magic. (First Aid doesn't have a pre-requisite and can be handy at low level, too, but if you decide to stay Fighter can sometimes be seen as "wasted build" if there's consistently a healer around.)

I know a High Orc with racial slay and racial prof who swings 20's, has a 210 slay, and enjoys when the IG newspaper comes out because he gets "Storytime." If it comes out, he can kill it. He also laughs and runs *toward* pantherghasts... but then again, so do most orcs :lol:

It's all a matter of what game you want to play. You don't have to know your character's end-game the first time you play them, so start out with your weapons skills, racials (if you have any), and play a game. You can always re-write the character after your first game if you don't like it.
 
My personal recommendation is to look at what class you want the character to eventually be. If that is a hybrid, pick one of the pures that make up that combination and start with that.

Want to play an earth templar at the high end? Start out as a fighter or a scholar until about level 10, then start picking up the skills for the other half.

This is because of the new sliding system Alliance put in. If you start out as one class, and want to become a different but related class, you just start picking up the skills to make you that class. When it becomes cheaper to be the new class, you just ask your logistics to slide you over.

It makes playing at the low levels a little bit more fun since you don't have to worry about your actual class to start with, and get a little power bump over the split class you may want to be in the end.
 
Inaryn said:
My personal recommendation is to look at what class you want the character to eventually be. If that is a hybrid, pick one of the pures that make up that combination and start with that.

Want to play an earth templar at the high end? Start out as a fighter or a scholar until about level 10, then start picking up the skills for the other half.

This is because of the new sliding system Alliance put in. If you start out as one class, and want to become a different but related class, you just start picking up the skills to make you that class. When it becomes cheaper to be the new class, you just ask your logistics to slide you over.

It makes playing at the low levels a little bit more fun since you don't have to worry about your actual class to start with, and get a little power bump over the split class you may want to be in the end.
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^^ this worked really well for me, I started out as a fighter and found myself fairly effective as an archer with two weapon profs and now that I am getting to level 10 I've picked up some spells which give me the protective's that I need to keep up with the higher level mods. The extra body points are huge at low levels as well.
 
In general I think fighters can easily find a group but of course being a good roleplayer and having good OOG skill are big factors here as well when it comes to getting invitations. And it depends on the group. If they have 5 and none can heal there's no way a fighter is getting the next spot. But there's no reason most mod groups won't take 1-3 fighters with them.

I don't know where you played, but 10 years ago on the east coast, fighter was considered the most powerful class for mods and wave battles because of the repetitive damage they dish out. They are much more powerful now than they were then (though celestial scholars are also much more powerful now than they were then).

Also, not having played in 10 years, you should be eligible for a rebuild should you want to play your old character as a fighter.

phedre said:
You can be "offensives guy," and go "prof-prof-slay-prof-prof-slay-eviscerate," the downside being that if anything ripostes your eviscerate back at you, you're laying down and hoping for a healer in the next 360 seconds.
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I've never seen a higher level fighter with no parries. If you want to do it for character reasons, no problem. But skipping your parries probably will get you disinvited from groups after level 7 or so. So if you want to be part of a group buy as many parries as you can.

I would say go fighter first. If you love it, keep going fighter. If not you can easily switch to earth templar.
 
James Trotta said:
But skipping your parries probably will get you disinvited from groups after level 7 or so. So if you want to be part of a group buy as many parries as you can.
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I'll start this with the disclaimer that I have yet to play Alliance (I'm fixing that this weekend), but I have been larping for a few years. I can understand if you want to be as useful to a group as possible, but I really can't see people passing you up or kicking you out based purely on your stats. For every group I've ever been a part of or spent time with, membership has either been completely open or based on personality.
 
I've seen plenty of groups that I wouldn't consider 'open' to people, but I don't think I know of anyone who would deny entry to a group because a character lacked a specific skill (except possibly Read and Write or First Aid), especially a combat skill. After all, it's unfair to require your Scholars to have Parry, why should you expect your Fighters to have it? Classes are out of game, so this distinction shouldn't be being made.

Now, that said, you may be limited from groups or excluded from missions for 'usefulness' reasons. Usefulness has three parts though: Game Ability (levels & skills), OOG Ability (fighting skill and packet accuracy), and "Being good at the game." If you've got only got one of those, it's hard to make up for the other three, but if you've got two of them, you're a pretty valuable member of a group. Some people are really good at all three, and rolling with those groups is down right impressive. Generally, when I'm pulling a mod team together from my group, I pull from the top down. If someone is a liability because they can't handle themselves in combat (whether it's because they don't have any Parries and that always gets them killed, or because they can't hit someone with a packet from three inches away) I tend not to take them on important things. If your goal is to go through life without having any Parries for character reasons, that's perfectly fine, lord knows my character isn't 'optimized' (craft skills will do that to you), just make sure that you make up for it by fighting smarter, better, or in a niche position in your group.
 
I agree with you that players shouldn't know or care what's on another player's stat card. But I don't think group composition is based on personality only. Group composition sometimes has to be based on roles: (healer, front line, artillery, traps, whatever). This is different from team membership which may be what you're talking about. An important part of our game is getting to go on modules (adventures for 6) during the course of an event and for those mod groups, you need more than just a winning personality.

A fighter without parries probably won't be good doing his job (fighting on the front line). If s/he happens to be so awesome that no one can ever hit him than obviously the stats don't matter. But really you need parries if you're job is to fight on the front line.

KyleSchmelz said:
James Trotta said:
But skipping your parries probably will get you disinvited from groups after level 7 or so. So if you want to be part of a group buy as many parries as you can.
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I'll start this with the disclaimer that I have yet to play Alliance (I'm fixing that this weekend), but I have been larping for a few years. I can understand if you want to be as useful to a group as possible, but I really can't see people passing you up or kicking you out based purely on your stats. For every group I've ever been a part of or spent time with, membership has either been completely open or based on personality.
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Tyler,

I can state with fair certainty that in SF your class and/or skill composition are going to matter far less than how you interact with other PCs when it comes to whether or not you will be included on a given adventure. The majority of our characters/groups are pretty inclusive as long as you're not being a jerk (and some don't even care about that as long as you're being a jerk to the right people ;) ).
 
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