>>I tried to keep some wood/non-metal weapons on me for the
>>Spirit, but frankly, even with divine saves, I lost the
>>malediction battle more times then not... He was probably
>the
>>worst tanking character I've ever played, and then I see
>very
>>similar builds in battle or whatever tanking much better. I
>>guess weapon practice would have helped a lot with him, but
>I
>>suck at it.
>
>Probably if you'd kept going with him, those skills would've
>gotten to the point where the tide turned just from playing.
>I'd assume your spec weapon skills would be at 100% just from
>levelling up? Not too much else that's relevant there...

Well my defenses and hth skill with both ass (75-80 percent, maybe 90% parry). Spec skills were perfected or close, yes, but I tanked like a brick, and even with sanc/shield/stone skin consistently got ass beat by everyone mobs and pcs... Just wasn't my style of character I guess.

>>I wasn't expecting much in guardian/mob fighting, but I also
>>wasn't expecting the complete beat down that divine
>>retribution dished out to this character. Some of that
>could
>>have been saves and low level, but I'm thinking it's more
>how
>>divine ret is set up (which I don't fully udnerstand) and
>how
>>this characters pk's went.
>
>Lots of good PKs hurt there. The balancing factor is that
>usually the players that are racking up a lot of PKs are also
>the players that have the assorted knowledge to manage a
>paladin with that spell or the Watcher, but not always.

Thought so, and, apparently not... I can prep a little, but I'm not exactly a pill popping fiend... On the other hand, I was very successful at pk through all levels with that character (at least for me). Not that I racked up 100's of kills, certainly dozens over the maybe 200 hours I played her.

>Maybe not. I'm starting to realize that there's not as much
>correlation as I'd thought between who the best PvP players
>are and who the best PvM players are. To give another
>example, I've seen some of the best PKer paladins die and die
>and get allies killed like crazy trying to get Defiance, and
>I've seen terrible PKer paladins repeatedly solo-get (and
>quickly lose) it without incident. Different kind of thought
>process and planning, I suppose!

I'd say this is most definitely true in my case as I can't PvM for anything, but I'm at least decent in PvP. Part of the reason I don't explore is probably that I'll come up against a mob that takes out 90% of my Hp in a few rounds and I just can't seem to see a way that the damage I'm doing will let me kill it without spending hours at it.

>Did I leave anything out? Were you looking for more
>information there anywhere?

No, that's a good run down, but it seems like, especially with invoker/transmuter you are presuming that you'll always have access to barrier etc, where I'd say most players can't make that same assumption. I've not played a high level invoker/transmuter but I've seen some with roughly my level of prep/gear knowledge try and raid and get wrecked even with another person to stand in front.

p.s. I've also been curious about raiding w/ Orcs post bully, but haven't had the time/masochistic tendency yet to roll a serious orc.