Curse

**Marty Silverblade** · Sep 24, 2015, 12:57 AM // 00:57

I'm going to disregard the (unnecessary and unwarranted) personal comments. There's life left in this thread and I want to see it through. PM me if you feel the need.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mandragora Screamer

Parameters made it all interesting

That's your opinion. I hold the opposite opinion; one that is supported through the thread. You want for people to be creative - there are certainly people willing to indulge you (the financial incentive was unnecessary) - but your parameters basically force us to run a derv stack. You said it yourself: you've tried everything under the sun and ended up with dervs. Look at what's happened in this thread. When I made my first post, I was thinking of using Dwayna dervs as a psuedo backline. Tyran then posts with the same idea. Then Pleikki. Then, eventually, you too. Frankly, this challenge isn't about who can develop the best builds, it's about who can best optimise their derv stack.

A successful team ought to have a frontline, midline and backline. Running only frontliners is doomed to fail. You cannot succeed without sufficient healing, damage mitigation, crowd control, etc. While frontliners can include some of these elements, they exist for a supplementary role rather than to do the bulk of the work. You need a derv stack because they can sit comfortably across all three lines. Forcing us to use only frontliners means committing to making significant build sins. It takes a hell of a lot to make up for that; and when that happens a lot of the time it greatly reduces the scope of viable options. I had a few workable ideas but it's a struggle to try to forget about how much better off you're likely to be by just chucking in another derv. Out of curiosity, I'd like to see you run that build again, but with anything else of your choice in place of SY. I'd wager you'll get your ass handed to you. If that's the case, it just goes to show how significant the hole you're putting us in is, and despite the ToF synergies and everything else, you need something as grossly overpowered as SY to overcome it.

Anyway, I won't beat a dead horse. The other reason your challenge wasn't of much interest was because it was effectively a yes or no question. You asked whether something was possible. When a solution is found a lot of the interest will dissipate. To create a good challenge - one that will foster competition - you need to find something that's doubtlessly possible but is a matter of finding the best way to do it. Some ideas off the top of my head:
-A rainbow physway, where you have two support chars and then one of each physical profession plus a caster profession running a weapon build.
-A caster physway, where the 5-6 physicals all need to be caster primaries. Perhaps push the idea to the extreme, ditching the physway concept and simply needing to have 5-6 casters who exist near exclusively in melee range.

You can use something like Raisu Palace HM as a means of objectively judging their effectiveness.

Mandragora Screamer · Nov 23, 2015, 11:33 PM // 23:33

/Nod. Much of what you said makes absolute sense. No argument. My entire goal was to see if an entire Melee team could make it. The answer is no. Not dervs, para's wars, sins, or rangers (sniff). I've had the luxury to try them (100%) all as mercs. At the same time, its quite a shame. That said, I've come up with some new builds...melee driven...but monk owned. On reddit. Apologies for my harshness, forgive me

MS