Class that is the hardest to win with.

[faction55]

As I approach finishing the game with my Summoner, so far it's been a leisurely stroll. I autoexplore and spam summons that kill everything for me and on the rare occasion I get attacked I always have a way to deal with it. My other winner before this over a year ago (just started playing again recently) was a Sun Paladin who was basically invincible.

So for my next run, I want the ultimate challenge. I want to play the worst class.

According to the character search, there are less then 15 Marauder winners ever, and not many more Shadowblade winners. So I'm thinking of starting Shadowblade to unlock Marauder, and then when I die, playing Marauder over and over and over again until I learn how to get by every boss and win the game. And I don't mean just "win" - I mean win by clearing every single dungeon, every backup guardian, etc. Might stream it too, who knows!

But maybe the lack of winners for these classes is due to a lack of popularity? Are there any others that are as hard?

[ohioastro]

Marauder is hard to unlock, so the low numbers are a bit deceptive. It's basically a higher damage rogue without stealth. FYI you can unlock Marauder with a normal rogue that makes it to the East without doing anything fancy.

The hardest class varies a bit with the version, as some classes get hit by changes more than others. Generally, melee is harder than caster, and the hybrids are harder to get going than the specialists. Doomed and cursed have been pretty rough recently.

[SageAcrin]

Many classes aren't so much hard as requiring a kind of technical knowledge of how they work that is not immediately apparent.

Shadowblade has one of the absolute most sick endgames in the game, and while Ambuscade is finally getting nerfed so that they literally cannot take out 90% of a floor from the door later in the game(no teleporting them), they have an amazing set of lategame combat options and a lot of fun tricks. It's just...very easy to screw up and try to get one of their good toys too fast, which can and will kill you.

Generally speaking, I'd say Marauder/Brawler/Temporal Warden/Rogue have the weakest games right now, but I don't feel secure in calling any one of them the actual worst class.

[Final Master]

Ultimate difficulty? Probably something in the realm of Yeek Brawler going for grappling on insane.

[greycat]

Shadowblade has one of the absolute most sick endgames in the game, and while Ambuscade is finally getting nerfed so that they literally cannot take out 90% of a floor from the door later in the game(no teleporting them), they have an amazing set of lategame combat options and a lot of fun tricks. It's just...very easy to screw up and try to get one of their good toys too fast, which can and will kill you.

My Shadowblade winner didn't use Ambuscade at all. I used Giant Leap to take out the first 2-4 monsters, then Shadowstep to take out the next monster, then a movement infusion + Flurry to take out the last monster, or to duck around a corner to rest up, etc.

While I don't doubt you when you say Ambuscade can do fun things to monsters, the class can absolutely destroy monsters without it as well.

[Isotope-X]

Ultimate difficulty? Probably something in the realm of Yeek Brawler going for grappling on insane.

Bummer. There goes my dream of having a 3 ft tall critter suplex Atamathon to death.

[SageAcrin]

Shadowblade has one of the absolute most sick endgames in the game, and while Ambuscade is finally getting nerfed so that they literally cannot take out 90% of a floor from the door later in the game(no teleporting them), they have an amazing set of lategame combat options and a lot of fun tricks. It's just...very easy to screw up and try to get one of their good toys too fast, which can and will kill you.

My Shadowblade winner didn't use Ambuscade at all. I used Giant Leap to take out the first 2-4 monsters, then Shadowstep to take out the next monster, then a movement infusion + Flurry to take out the last monster, or to duck around a corner to rest up, etc.

While I don't doubt you when you say Ambuscade can do fun things to monsters, the class can absolutely destroy monsters without it as well.

Essence of Speed, high grade Stealth or Invis builds(my Shadowblade rarely used Ambuscade+teleport because it's boring, instead running an Invis/Tricks of the Trade build and mostly using Ambuscade for short range ambushes), or even just running one as a heavy armor tank with Blur Sight, Dual Weapon Defense and their surprisingly good Combat Training to make them harder to kill through melee than a Bulwark...

Yeah, long term Shadowblade's hard to screw up. Easy to screw up early and mid-game though.

[jenx]

Ghoul solipsist on nightmare
any slinger on nightmare

in regular mode, I'd say rogue and marauder

[SageAcrin]

Hey, Ghoul Solipsist is one of the three or four Ghoul combos that's winnable on Nightmare. I think.

Ghoul Bulwark on Nightmare, now. Give that a spin.

[breadsmith]

Ghoul Brawler. Bulwarks stand around getting hit, but Brawlers need to move, which ghouls are sort of bad at. And good luck using those Spellhunt Remnants with all those runes.

[SageAcrin]

Ghoul Brawler. Bulwarks stand around getting hit, but Brawlers need to move, which ghouls are sort of bad at. And good luck using those Spellhunt Remnants with all those runes.

Bulwark actually tanks a lot on Defense on Normal.

On Nightmare, enemy accuracy values are way too high for Bulwark Defense to save you and there's practically no way to buff it for them.

Bulwark also relies heavily on resists...and every single Orc gets L8 Skirmisher the moment they start showing up, which punches through 40% of your resists, so that's not helping either.

At least Brawler has more damage. Bulwark, outside of the earlygame, strikes me as utterly hopeless.

(Nightmare: Screwing with class balance like nothing else.)

[Umbrall]

Ultimate difficulty? Probably something in the realm of Yeek Brawler going for grappling on insane.

Bummer. There goes my dream of having a 3 ft tall critter suplex Atamathon to death.

Too relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u84cH_bmTA


Yeek Shadowblade is probably worse early game.

[jenx]

In nightmare mode, I can only get slingers going by visiting towns and drowning rares . I then sell the drop and purchase better shots and sling. But now in 1.0.4, that is tougher, due to reduced cash from rare drops.

[b0rsuk]

Marauders are okay, just boring. They are tough and deal high damage. Putting 5 points into Poisons makes them particularly deadly. My issue with them is their (semi)unique trees and talents are weak:
- Vicious Strikes is bad in a game where vast majority of enemies, even at High Peak, have 0 armor
- Total Thuggery has outrageous stamina cost and the effectiveness doesn't justify it. The only way I've been able to use TT on regular basis is with Adrenaline Surge. Even then, Total Thuggery coupled with Greater Weapon Focus and Flurry doesn't impress.
- Defence is binary, so you can find light armor builds unreliable. It's completely worthless against many bosses.
- Hack&Back is bad: weak, high stamina cost, long cooldown, and most monsters in the game have ranged attacks.
- To get the most out of the final Mobility talent you need to get several mostly average talents which are far away from each other. Rush is good, but it's better to pump Rush directly or get Giant Leap.
- Light of Foot's stamina generation promotes terrible micromanagement: the fastest way to regen stamina is NOT resting, but walking in a place like a little girl waiting for her turn in toilet. It's the same with Light of Foot/Step Up combo: walk around a monster up to 8 times, then attack. But Step Up is unreliable in that it can stop randomly if anything happens.

Also, there are no daggers or dagger/sword sets useful for a Marauder. They all seem to be either Dex/Cun, Dex/Magic, etc. No plain str/dex ordinary daggers supposedly use.

On the plus side, damage output is high, status effect resistance good, and you get many disabling moves. But I don't see much point of later skills in Dirty Fighting: past early game I rarely even use these disabling moves, and most bosses are stun-resistant anyway.

In summary, Marauder is an unexciting bump attacker that does well if you are conservative in your skill choices. There's poor skill synergy. I have some ideas for overhaul of Mobility and Thuggery trees, but I need time to flesh them out.

--------------------

Bulwarks are a newbie trap. It's easy to load on skills that make early game trivial but don't do anything to help later on. You must know EXACTLY what you're doing. I'd rather recommend berserkers to newbies, they're much more consistent and don't desensitize you to real threats.

[supermini]

Marauders are probably one of the more difficult. For extra points, play them in light armour. I failed so many times to clear one on roguelike that I almost gave up.

This is the one I cleared eventually: http://te4.org/characters/13640/tome/bf ... 3783b05b03 .

Greater Weapon Focus, True Grit and status resist are the really good skills Marauders have in my opinion. I'd highly recommend poisons as well.

If I was playing one again, I probably would have picked flexible combat as one of the prodigies, to use gloves of regeneration for the second wind proc. I found those to be a good solution to stamina related problems on the brawler, in the rare cases it cropped up. And yeah, you will probably have those on marauder.

Then again, the tree that gives you stamina regen and stamina on kill was locked in that version, so maybe that has changed.