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Comments
They are like people who participate in a marathon while driving a car and boast when they finish in third place.
→My Mudlet Scripts
→My Mudlet Scripts
Plus with getting one of those sallet helms how could I not go knight as some point.
This is now about tanks in triathlons. Screw knights.
→My Mudlet Scripts
Serpent combat is also very different vs every class that you play against. I would say this is the case far more than any other class - making it much more challenging - and thus more badass when you can do it well.
Another thing that makes it badass is that it has no defensive crutch, and cannot slow prep. Surviving comes down to predicting (and avoiding) kill setups, or using illusions to outsmart your opponent. You can't just hit your Numb/ puppet travel/ astral form/ health trans/ Phoenix/ Kai cripple/etc button, or soulcage/mog and walk away when you should have died. You also have less active/passive affliction mitigation than almost every other class in the game. In short, your defense is pure skill and offensive adaptability, which scales profoundly the player's skill, not simply an ability or combination of abilities that are simply used or not used.
Also, serpent offense is capable of (and frequently does) venomlock and defeat people who buy enough arties to be essentially unkillable any other way. On the other hand, you might find it much more difficult to kill newer, low health players than other classes, since (in my experience) there is a very small degree of change in curing "skill" among about 98% of the playerbase (ie. They all use SVO or stock serverside). So in this regard, a newbie (with trans survival) and a trust fund kid with $10,000 in arties might be, quite literally, the same challenge to you.
If you can't tell, I truly think Serpent is the most badass class (I could probably list 10 more reasons). Having spent the last 7-8 years basically doing laps around the class list (having played only serpent for the first 3), I can safely say that if I could only play one class, it would absolutely be serpent (and it will be the first thing I do when multiclass comes out). Just be warned, it isn't BM, Monk, Knight, Sylvan, Magi - it will demand effort, creativity, adaptability, and a LOT of patience. However, this patience is rewarded eventually, after enough time has passed that the monks and magi who always beat you hit their classes skill cap, and you keep on getting better and more powerful, the longer you keep learning (and inventing) more strategies.
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One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important
I've noticed that that classes with the best defense against <whatever> tend to die particularly easy to that particular strategy - especially if they play one class for a very long time continuously. Knights, for example, DO die to (physical) damage because they never have to learn how to actively mitigate damage or work offensive hindrance into their strategy. Knights also rarely learn how to cure well because they can just slam their foreheads on their Fitness button and never get venomlocked.
I would agree that old knights were definitely not badass, as their tactics are some of the most linear in the game, and rarely require adapting in any way to an opponent's strategy, class, personality, etc. Want to get better at combat as a Knight? Buy gauntlets. Have level 3 weapons & gauntlet? Good, you're automatically in the top 100 "best" fighters in the game, if you do nothing but spam venomless DSLs and learn how to spam thurisaz/lunge/engage/impale/dsb until your opponent stops moving. Yeah, there are some more tricky strategies, but even these are relatively simple relative to other more dynamic classes.
Disclaimer: This is referring to "old" knight, and arguably, dual-cutting. It may or may not be true for the new reworked knights, but reports do seem to be flowing in that indicate that nothing has changed in this respect. Reference: 2-hander DPS is higher than old knight ever was. Blunt spec has one of the most linear, simple, and repeateable instakills in the entire game (to the point where you could probably in-game alias the entire kill sequence in a single command). They also got a huge affliction mitigation upgrade, so I don't see the "curing crutch" effect going away any time soon.
This is why, even though I do think serpent is the most badass class, I still change class every few months. When the day comes that I do get to go back to Serpent, I won't be crippled by handicaps that someone who only plays a serpent might never realize they have.
Someone just said that serpent (the class with SHRUGGING and EVADE) is bad at walking away and affliction mitigation.
If only I could find that LOL button...
(Serpent is a mid-level difficulty class these days).
Straw. Man. Argument. - every single time. If you are going to argue with every single thing that I say, at least actually argue with what I actually said instead of replacing it with a statement you're able to find something wrong with.
Meanwhile, what I actually said (in contrast to the words you put in my mouth - which replaced reasonable, factual claims, with not just false, but provocatively false statements), was:
I couldn't have made it any clearly that it was a purely subjective and personal statement, however this particular snippet that you chose to isolate and use to sarcastically, then directly insult me, happens to be completely true (and is not at all what you quoted). I'm not going to get trolled into arguing with you about the actual subject, because frankly nobody wants to hear it, and I doubt you'd even bother reading it anyways.
I'm just going to say that it's getting really old making on-topic, non-offensive, factually accurate posts, and having to deal with (not so passive)-aggresive insults and quite frankly, lies from the same handful of individuals, over and over again.
Your post was solely intended to insult me. You completely misrepresented what I said to make me look stupid, and your argument didn't even make sense, since I never claimed that serpent "is bad at walking away" or that serpent "is bad at damage mitigation". You rewrote what I said into something similar but factually unrelated, and commenced insulting me based on the statements that I didn't make.
You then solidified your eloquent post with an "lol" (solid evidence that it was a good change), followed by a completely ridiculous statement statement: "(Serpent is a mid-level difficulty class these days)" which I don't think a single qualified (unbiased) person in the game would agree with. You added this sentence to the bottom of your post in order to: Insult me, anger me, invite others to agree with you, condescend by "refuting" a very well structured, detailed argument with a single sentence containing zero actual information, and in all likely to humor yourself.
What you (and the forum mods) need to understand is that posts like this ( regardless of whether my post was actually "right" or "wrong" ) was purely meant to be offensive, contributed absolutely nothing to anyone or anything, and could not be a more direct violation of the forum rules. The problem isn't the buttons, @Tecton, it is the people pressing them (and the mods who aren't making them stand in the corner when they break the rules).
I'd definitely go with infernal. And that's based entirely on the "evil-ass plate-wearing knights of whom rip people into pieces". Plus it's probably easier than most other classes, combat-wise.
Otherwise, I'd agree with Ernam on the serpent part. A sketchy, shifty, dagger-wielding snake sort of character who travels through (basically stealth but phase) and backstabs people, then fires arrows at them, or maybe even just steals from people? It's pretty cool.
And an honourable mention to monks and blademasters, but these only really apply to people who like the martial-arts style deal. If you think Bruce Lee or a samurai are more badass than a plate-wearing knight, you'd want to lean towards that.
Someone else mentioned Apostate, which does also have the ability vivisect that everyone is mentioning. (Ripping one's sternum out and impaling them with it). It just so happens that only one apostate in the game actually does it, because most other people don't know how to set it up.
I'm speaking strictly from a visual standpoint here. Just what each class sort of "looks" like. Anyone can roleplay a badass, and the class doesn't affect it. If you're speaking strictly from a visual standpoint, you can probably write the following classes off:
- Magi (cool class and all, just not badass by default)
- Bard (plays music as a form of attack; unless that music is cannibal corpse, it's not too edgy)
- Any forestal: druids, sentinels, sylvans (forest-lovers aren't generally badass)
- Alchemist is sort of a mad-scientist kind of deal, that's subjective badassery
And of course, I sadly need to say Jester. It's not too badass to use pranks as a weapon, I just
If you're looking for badass visuals: Infernal > Serpent > Apostate > Occultist > Shaman
If you want simpler combat: Occultist or infernal; if you drop money into Occultist, you can pretty much damage-kill half of the game.
If you haven't touched this game since your post, then good luck on your adventures IRL, and I'm sorry to myself for typing this out.
Serpent is amazing at walking (and sneaking, dashing, warping) away, but that doesn't make it easier to survive kill setups once they are initiated (since evade is stopped by the same things as walking, and preventing walking away is the first step of virtually every kill sequence in the game).
Serpent has a hybrid active/passive cure, but the afflictions healed per time is quite low (mathematical fact). It's also visible to 3rd parties. However, serpent is really great at indirect affliction mitigation via offensive hindrance, creative illusions, and psychological tricks - which was my point. In other words, it is good at affliction mitigation, but not via a single "push this button to prevent venomlocks" ability like knights, magi, sylvan, jester, etc etc. Ie, in my opinion, this makes serpent badass, and it makes easier classes "just as good, but less challenging, less dynamic, and thus ultimately less powerful in the highest tiers of combat, which is something that simply won't become relevant to the vast majority of players).
Artemis says, "You are so high maintenance, Tharvis, gosh."
Tecton says, "It's still your fault, Tharvis."
As far as flavor is concerned, I think I would have said Serpent (again) thanks to various methods of infiltration, theft, espionage, guilds, illusions, roleplay in general, and the absence of hundreds of Lupine Bows... however all of these things were either figuratively or literally deleted.
So these days I'd have to say that as flavor goes, Shaman is actually pretty awesome now, and Infernals will always be a staple standard of badassery. If you like the same features in a weed-whacker that you like in a class, you'll probably think that Dragon is pretty badass too.
Poor serpent vs affliction classes. Who knew it was that hard for them.
I didn't say serpent wasn't strong - I believe it to be the strongest class in the game.
However, I think we're talking about two different things. I think that entry-level serpent pretty challenging, because of the amount of new concepts required to learn before any results in 1v1 can be achieved, combined with the challenge of learning how to accurately watch and react to your opponents' curing, and the huge obstacle of finding a fast, efficient, but adaptable input system (a challenge that I've yet to see anyone actually achieve, without scripting). However, I wouldn't say that entry or mid-level serpent is "the hardest class in the game". High-end magi, for example, can be much more challenging. However, what happens when you hit magi's notorious skill wall? I simply believe that as other classes hit that wall where they simply can't get anything more out of their classes, serpents have the unique opportunity to keep improving and developing new things - essentially forever.
It shouldn't be confused though, I was referring to end-game serpent, not the "average" player. At this point I think I can safely say I've played through the range of most classes' potential, and I've found that what can be achieved very abruptly tapers off for most classes, right around the point where you know how and when to use all of your abilities. It is also the only class that you can really sit down for hours and just play with new combat theory ideas (for years) and still always find new, interesting things to experiment with. When is the last time a Runewarden changed the combat scene with a never-before-seen strategy or counter (prior to the changes)? For serpent, this happens all the time, which also allows each serpent to have their own, unique style, unlike other more linear, less creative classes.
I didn't say "abuse" a single time, but I did say "You've refused to play any class that didn't solely rely on massive artefact-stacked damage boosted by near-constant TFs, staff of nicator, and often relics." - which I think given your actual history, is quite accurate (with the notable exception of the whiplash-paced dabble into alchemist, that lasted ~4 days before you gave up and went runewarden). I deleted the post after about 5 seconds when I realized that it was going to be read and responded to as a dick-measuring contest, instead of a calm and accurate observation.
Also never said that you don't understand combat mechanics - I said that you have standard curing, are easy to lock (if you take away the enormous DPS/affliction pressure of 25str + staff), and have never actually achieved any measure success with your various forays into affliction combat. Prove me wrong and keep up that kill pace of yours as a class that doesn't double or triple scale with artefacts, and uses afflictions, intellect, and player creativity instead. (serpent is the king of this, IMO, which makes it badass, again, IMO).
Flavour-wise, it's blademaster. Being the "most badass" is pretty much the unifying theme for the entire class.