Shattered Kingdoms

You give this paladin too much credit, Syndal. As Dulrik has said in the past he's checked many high level characters and very few of them pack any saves. That still holds true today.

Plus, a hellion only needs 1 thing. With cleave, they can kill anything, no matter how buff.

Not anything. A few things can survive a critical cleave.

Is a critical cleave just luck? Or is it just that the cleave does enough damage to kill the person?

And, Cyra's comment, so when playing SK, you should just always assume everybody sucks, or what?

It's luck.

EDIT: I'd NEVER use cause critical in a fight. if for some reason I couldn't pop hellfire, I'd go for deafness, then weaken, then poison/curse. Aside from cause light, I really dont reccommend the cause series. Cause serious sucks horribly at lower levels, and cc is too long a cast. Sure, cleave makes hellions look like a 2-trick pony, and sure, it'd be "nice" if they got new spells, but they aren't needed. A hellion should be putting out more damage than a paladin - that's just the way it is. As for bog being worthless against hellions, that's not entirely true, either. a 4% bog, is still 4% of damage that a hellion CAN'T heal from in a straight fight. in otherwords, if the fight drags out too long, the hellion will simply die from attrition.

Intimidate, dominate, cleave, rift.

Hellions > Paladins.

How is Intimidate better than sanctuary? Sanctuary reduces all the damage you take.

Intimidate, as far as I can see, isn't better than sanctuary. I don't think it's supposed to be.

Good point about Locate Object. Why -do- Paladins have it? They get Call Armor, which reduces the need for corpse and item location, so I would think that Hellions getting Locate Object would be a good balance to that.

Otherwise, they don't seem grossly unbalanced to me. Insert my usual disclaimer about how I'm no expert on this stuff.

Paladin versus Hellion is pretty well balanced now. Hellion was getting the short-end before the changes, when they didn't have parry and protection. Now in a party, they are excellent for support. It's just that most hellions tend to play the lone-wolf 'knightly' figure, and rightly so, lest they would receive many insults on their "honor". Yes, paladins will most likely destroy them one on one.

Intimidation doesn't require mana/concentration upkeep to be always on, and it's a skill check against the whole party for the attackers. It's debatable which is really better. However, after paladin received dodge and nimbus effect, hellion could probably use a secondary effect on hellfire as well, when his enemies have supreme enchantments where maledictions fail.

There was a book written by Shigherito (sp?) Tsao, a player known as Paco from years ago. He wrote that hellions shouldn't be played as one-versus-one knuckleheads, but as an Overlord. Then he explained how to go about that. A very interesting book. I wonder if it's still around. In a group, intimidate + cleave + maledictions + optional dominate, that's how hellions are supposed to fight.

My experience for using any kind of cause aside from light is that you're going to get waisted, or you're going to spend more energy than you needed to to do the same basic amount of damage with another spell.

I really wish that domination was taken out for some other CHA based utility spell for the Hellion. There is like one good dominate among them all and we don't see the spell used anymore because you have to have uber concentration to hang onto it. Especially when you're fighting someone and trying to cast spells. It just doesn't flow well with all of the rest of their skills.

I don't know if Pallys have hellions so beat straight out of the box. You're neclegting a lot of other toys that Hellions get that can really screw another class. I'll give you a hint, Seram (this was the right S-named hellion hero right?) nearly beat that crap out of my hellion with only having his base lvl spells.

Before I render a verdict I'd like to see a few fights between Thayian and Slayne at even odds. I'd consider those to be the best PKers of their respective classes for quite some time, and I think they'd prove, if anyone can, that one class needs a boost over the other.

Get nine max CHA hellions in one group and try to attack it.

Thats how intimidate is better.