Warriors

albies player must be catatonic by now

Nothing wrong with being ye olde slobbering retard for a while at least. For some people it might be their niche where they really love to play.

Armageddon PK though.. that's srs business.

As far as the whole "Grom threw the fight" thing.. whatever. He probably didn't know any better. Standard operating procedure for combat as a warrior is dismount, fight shit. Who the hell throws out disarms at his attacker/victim to throw a fight? The answer is no one and Hyperion you should defer to what Sirra said because 1. There's proof on the forum and 2. He was there, bro.

To those less then vet players, the real biggest factor of the reality of "pvp" is IG intel and player knowledge in my opinion. The rest is a complex mix of factors that includes stats, connections, player skill and raw character skill and powers. Warriors do the one thing they do well, and that's whipping that ass in a straight fight. There's something really satisfying about being at the upper echelon of warrior and knowing you can stomp out almost anyone or anything who looks cross at you.. but remember this is often the same feeling that leads them to death. Personally, I love playing any of the sneaky type classes but it does take some time and effort getting your shit together before you can confidently start fucking warriors' days up. So there's the trade off.

e.g.
Sirra is gonna PK the shit out of my warrior who rolled around the same time, but he's definately going to get that leet gear, poison and some motherfucking parry, ride, archery before he's going to sink his teeth in. Until then, I'm going to be able to make him my bitch for a while beforehand skill wise.

Warrior is generally a PvE guild. It's too one-dimensional to make a good PvP character. Excluding magick, you usually want a ranger, or possibly an assassin though they're really not the greatest for anything except ganking soft targets who would have been killable by any remotely decent fighter. Assassins just aren't quite reliable enough and only really work in cities unless you're trying to gank newbie d-elves or some shit.

Defensively, you can counter a warrior by the sheer act of hiding or running. You pretty much just have to not stand and fight. Assuming you're not in a locked apartment or something, it's very unlikely that a warrior can force you to fight it out -- he'd have to bash you, and then you'd have to neglect to flee when you stand up so that he can bash you again. No respectable player will let that happen to them.

While extremely high weapon skills can get scary, it's usually still going to take a good four or five hits from a non-giant/mul warrior to kill you. Giants will almost never have the skill to reliably hit a competent fighter over and over, and muls are just too rare and usually not in a position to do proper sparring for the months it takes to get good. Human, dwarf and elf warriors will have to be very lucky to take you out in less than four blows unless you're an idiot trying to PvP with like 90 hp.

Offensively, warriors are countered by ranged attacks of all kinds, poisons, obviously magick, and potentially sap/backstab if they haven't got high endurance. If they have, and are sitting comfortably at 120+ hp and stun, it's very rare to take them out in the sap/backstab itself and then the assassin will get disarmed twice, then maybe bashed if they haven't already been destroyed, and will probably never land a follow-up attack to proc poisons.

Disarm is basically just for fighting assassins as the lag from backstab is so long that you can disarm them twice and then bash. I don't think I would ever disarm anyone else, a ranger will usually just draw another weapon and will be much more likely to have high defense and/or a subguild with disarm for protection against it. So disarm is to counter assassins, to fight NPCs, and lastly to avoid getting disarmed yourself on the off chance that someone tries.

What's stopping an assassin from maxing offense/defense/weapon skills? On average, you're not going to be going after maxed warriors. Unless they have a shield, you probably have a good chance to finish off that 30 hp. Just throwing that out there, I know it's far less than ideal.

Nothing to stop you. It's just so inconvenient, for a variety of little reasons that add up, that if you don't specifically start out with an assassin, whose sole intent is to get offense/defense as high as possible...Then you probably won't reach that point before mantishead happens.

For one thing, the vast majority of assassins are urban-based. You simply will not develop a good off/def or vs humanoid/vs critter stat in the rinth. You'll get to what you mistakenly think is great. But it won't be that good. It'll just be 'good'. You only get great by fighting in the wilderness. 

This already means you're probably a twink or an old-time player, because any sane or rational person would not think assassin = outdoors. But it does. So that means you're an assassin/hunter, or assassin/whatever-extended-subguild-does-hunter-stuff-best. I can't be arsed to look up all the new ones. But hunter is the core of it.

Why hunter? It lets you pretend to be a shitty ranger. And this is vital. You don't want to get a reputation as the guy backstabbing shit out in the wilderness. Not because they'll think you're a twink, but it just means that once pegged as an assassin, anyone that knows you're assassin class, will know exactly how to counter you. More importantly, going hunter gives you wilderness stealth and the ability to skin animals.

So you're an assassin/hunter, with the specific intent of maxing out defense/offense and other hidden stats.

Well, congratulations. You fucking suck at fighting animals. Here's a newsflash: Warriors and especially rangers start off with a healthy cushion to their off/def and their vs animals stat. (On a scale of 1-3, a warrior is 2/2 at humanoids/animals out of chargen, a ranger is 1/3, and an assassin is like 2.5/1).

So you've got two choices, essentially. Unless you want to be Mr. Karma 7 Big Dicked Mul Assassin operating out of Red Storm. I'm assuming you're not Mr. K7BDMA. I've got nothing for Mr. K7BDMA. Except that if I was going to make a mul, I wouldn't waste it on an assassin. Because fuck Mr. K7BDMA. You might be a mul, but any human warrior or ranger will still own you outside a Red Storm alleyway or the 'rinth.

And by the way? You will need to be either a dwarf or a human, and you better somehow roll exceptional strength, and an HPs above ~100. If that didn't work out for you, then this isn't a character worth trying to max off/def on.

(Half-giants can fuck right off)

So those two choices, yes. Choice #1) Timewarp back to pre-Volcano days and play a Gypsy. The Gypsies used to have a perfect, tranquil, idyllic hunting ground which made skeet lizards seem like verrin hawks, and you could just put your dick in any hole in the ground and get sucked off by Mother Nature.

That leaves #2: You go to the Grasslands, and spend the next few weeks twinking on verrin hawks and skeet lizards. You'll have a fun time because nothing there hits hard enough to concern you, the regen is crazy, and you can sneak all day. And as it happens, sneaking is vital part of hunting skeet lizards effectively. Having to chase down a skeet lizard until its too tired to flee is no fun.

So we're talking 1-2 RL months or so, to effectively get up your weapon skills. This could change, but plan on at least 15-20 days RL playing time. And this is assuming you're just a twink. Your backstab will be great. It will go up much easier in the grass. Hope you haven't been outed as what you are by the dozens of mages who operate in the grasslands. Hope you have managed to resist all this time getting dragged into someone's shitty clan, and that nothing hasn't killed you and your great-statted assassin. It's hard to die on the grasslands, but an assassin can manage it (Hello Mr. Cilop).

That's another thing warriors and rangers have on assassins. They can own a cilops right out the gate. A cilops will sexually master you in ways you didn't know were possible as a fresh assassin.

Now you're ready for stage 3. Which is to actually go somewhere dangerous and working on your vs humanoid. This means killing a lot of gith. Lots of gith. Your weapon skills, backstab and such shouldn't matter by now. I would NEVER use backstab/sap in the tablelands anyways. You're just there to kill gith, and get your vs. humanoid up.

Try to not get poisoned/flayed/raped by the local delves. Without Red Fangs around, it might be safer. Why is Stage 3 mass murder of Gith? Because when you join a guild, you're gonna find your time sorely tested. So kill lots of gith while you can. Your off/def will slowly, slooowly keep raising. 

This stage could last an indeterminate period. You will only know you're 'done', when you are basically 2-3 shotting any gith you see without backstabbing or sapping.

Stage 4 is join the Byn. You will be feeling like a badass, and will surprise some in the beginning (if they know you're an assassin, otherwise they'll just think you're a decent 15 day ranger). But will shortly get angry at how warriors, with their superior parry, disarm (which hits assassins particularly hard) and a vs humanoid/offense/defense that might still be better than yours, kicks your ass. Even rangers, with their higher parry and dual wield, will be surprisingly better than you. And you're outright fucked if they're using slashing or chopping weapons. Because you won't have the slashing/chopping skill to boost your parry. This is the number one killer of assassins who think they're good in a straight fight.

It's much more rare, for rangers, to fight a warrior with advanced weapon skills. It's very common for assassins to fight slashers/choppers.

Later, you will realize that even out in the wilderness, you're pretty much anyone's bitch. Because you can't ride worth a shit. You couldn't take a riding subclass because you needed one that gave you wilderness stealth. Maybe there's a newfangled extended subguild that lets you both stealth outdoors, and have nomad-level riding. Because anyone without nomad/ranger level riding in the wilderness is screwed, unless they're a mage doing magey things. 

Can't fight with weapons out on beetleback? Can't charge? Can't trample? Congratulations, you're fucked.

Gradually, the assassin realizes that he's best at using poisoned daggers, in someone's bedroom or alleyway, and relying on the auto-poison from backstab. Then he never bothers or gets lucky enough to get a great-statted assassin to work on their off/def with.

Congratulations, you've just spent 60-70 days of playtime (or an equivalent time reading this post) and have answered Gunslinger's question.

I'd say the 'rinth deserves slightly more credit than sirra gives it. The hunting thing does work but requires a huge detour as you have to first work on your backstabbing and then proceed to training your vs. human skills afterwards; and unless you're planning to hunt people in the wilderness, which I would never do with an assassin, all that investment into outdoors shit is wasted in the long run as it was really just a tool to raise backstab and piercing a bit more easily.

I especially don't like the thought of taking a fledgling assassin to the Tablelands to fight gith, that's so unsafe and unreliable compard to just roughing it in the 'rinth for a while. Gith are not significantly better opponents than the handful of particularly tough 'rinth NPCs, and any time spent dicking around in the wilderness with an assassin is like playing a round of Russian Roulette.

So the same thing can be done in the 'rinth. The main concern really would be piercing as not much in the 'rinth can dodge you with weapon skills over 40, but at that point you could just trek up to Tuluk and spend a week fighting stilt lizards. You don't need the hunter subguild to do this, maxed city sneak is fine for sneaking up on shit in the grasslands. Until this point, the 'rinth serves all your needs and has the added bonus of being a lot safer than the wilds for a newbie assassin, assuming the 'rinth isn't full of retard mages that month.

There's a few tough NPCs in the 'rinth who will give you a run for your money and make good sparring for quite a while. Guys like twitchy and toothless are brutal, and the elves can roll high agility which makes for good dodging targets. You will want 110+ hp and stun doing this, though, but then the same goes for any PvP character. I prefer 120+ as this also allows you to survive maxed backstabs a lot of the time, or lets you fall an extra room.

The 'rinth is about on par with the Byn for sparring with the added benefit of being available whenever you want, and occasionally having some cool roleplay going on. People also won't give you as much shit for being an assassin because these come and go in the 'rinth and most will assume you'll be dead in two weeks like the all other assassins. Key here is to not leave too much of a mess behind, i.e. don't kill shit if you can avoid it. Disengage and flee when your target is close to death. If people notice corpses in every street and suspect you, they'll start being dicks.

Main issue with playing in the 'rinth is access to poisons, boredom, and the risk of some crazy shit going down while you're around as some moron on his first special app thinks he's Quick 2.0 or some shit. You won't max out in the 'rinth, but it's a very good place to lay the groundworks without spending your difficult first 10 days in the wilderness. People tend not to give a shit about the 'rinth because 9 times out of 10, everyone involved will be dead next month.

Once your progress plateaus here, go on vacation in Tuluk for two weeks and fight lizards in the pleasant weather. This will take your piercing skill to the point where any further progress takes the special kind of months-long grinding that you have to go through on any combatant you want to truly max out.