>Arials can't cover water, so they're at least at a
>disadvantage against invokers.

Well, yes and no. I would say water is more coverable than iron/mithril as long as you aren't Battle. You have at least a chance of an invoker on your side or a niche piece of gear or two that helps.

>I admit that's a pretty niche
>disadvantage. They also miss out on some primo gear.

There I agree that there's one of the bigger arial disadvantages that is often missed, although, keep in mind that elf/d-elf is also missing out on good-friendly iron gear and evil-friendly mithril gear respectively. I'm not saying there's a million pieces of that, but I'd sure miss a few iron poison daggers as an elf dagger, jewelled broadsword/Humansunder as a d-elf sword, etc.

>For
>most people that's not an issue, but we're talking about the
>"upper reaches" here, so it might bear consideration. Arials
>lack perma-sneak. Their big advantage, permaflight, is
>rendered mostly irrelevant if the character is going Fortress.

I disagree on this, but it's partially my play style. I'm almost never going to be in serious PK danger in a situation where things are un-dire enough for me that I have my cabal powers. I discount permafly on Fort/Outlander characters a lot less than most people do, so that might just be me.

Heck, on any character with fly on their spell list (but not racial fly) that I play 200+ hours I probably will take at least one death that racial fly would prevent. Flights dispelled in gangs, sleeps that outlast fly's duration, etc.

Of course, if we're talking about a Battle warrior, racial fly is an extra premium because it's pretty much the only way you're going to ever have it.

>They also lack swiftstrike. While swiftstrike isn't "the
>bomb", it's arguably more useful than permaflight/wingsweep if
>we're comparing elf-fortress to arial-fortress.

Arguable, but SS can indeed be pretty nice. I don't think it plays super well with dagger, but it's really nice for a lot of the better parrying specs.

Although, I want to say I once crunched the numbers on number of returned attacks by elf sword with riposte + swiftstrike vs. arial with just riposte, and the arial either comes out ahead or it's close. (The arial definitely just gets hit less in melee, though, which is a plus.) Swiftstrike is also easier to negate than riposte. (See the respective helpfiles.) Of course, an elf axe will get some returned attacks where the arial axe will get zero, so there it's clearly advantage swiftstrike.

>I'm not saying elves are superior to arials, necessarily, but
>I think the comparison is a little closer than you suggest.