Fighters

[kazak 2]

Just wanted to chime in and give the fighter class some approbation, since they don't get a lot of mentions lately.

This was the first class I tried (and died frequently with) when I first started playing ToME4, and I just stopped playing them after so many unsuccessful runs (especially when the armor mechanic changed so that you took damage even from the weakest critters). So I fired up a dwarf fighter recently just for the hell of it and he's doing really surprisingly well.

I have a tendency to gauge the awesomeness of a class on its ability to survive the ambush. This is probably my first class to beat the ambush without using invisibility. And it was a cakewalk.

As far as I can tell, the awesomeness of the class lies in ridiculous armor/defense (obviously), good burst damage, and really good positioning. The last was what surprised me, since this is the first time I've tried a character with Step-up. Step-up is like popping a movement infusion every time you kill something, so you can easily place yourself in the most advantageous position for each round. So for the ambush, rush an archer, kill it. Then move at super-speed to take out another archer, then do this again, and again, until you're out of archers and then you just start taking out everyone else. That was simple enough that it took me a while to realize that, even when I was getting hit by the boss, with my high armor it wasn't actually doing much. I think I was taking damage of less than 20 on each hit.

Late game, one of my favorite tactics has been just using mobs of bad guys as shields, and using step-up and movement infusions to make surgical strikes. The melee guys will surround you, hardly doing any damage, yet shielding you from ranged attackers. Kill an adjacent monster, super-speed to kill a ranged attacker, then super-speed back to your human(oid) shields. Or if there are no crowds around, you can pop a movement infusion from behind a wall, super-speed over and assault your target (like an orc corrupter or whatever), then super-speed back behind cover.

So far, the main problems are magic damage and stamina. With all the heavy armor, rush currently costs around 80 stamina out of 200 or so, for instance. Drawn out fights often quickly devolve into regular attacks, though my stamina is high enough at this point that I get a decent amount of talent attacks in before I run dry. And magic/elemental attacks have tended to shred this guy, though I've managed to get most resistances up over 50%.

Not really much of a point to this post, other to say that this class is much more fun than expected. I fully expected it to be more of a boring tank scenario, just mindlessly plowing through things. But step-up really allows for much more strategic play.

Link: http://te4.org/characters/1022/tome/31d ... 25900d6212

[TheRani]

Step Up is one of my most favorite fighter talents. One of the best passive abilities ever!

[kazak 2]

UPDATE: And my first win with a melee class. With high dex/armor and resists near max, the final battle was waaaay easier than with the archmage. Even managed to keep Aeryn alive this time.

Once I got resists up, this guy was able to tank most anything pretty well. The only time I can recall having a close call was a unique in one of the lower levels of high peak, who had high level call shadows.

Anyway, kind of a stupidly easy win, but a lot of fun nonetheless.