The Great Race; a proposal for "Khalim" awards

[Crystalion]

I was annoyed that the assy was basically a 'chat screen gem'.  So I tend to lose interest fast when encountering Assy posts.

Well, I personally considered the Assassin horribly broken prior to v1.10. So much so that I stopped playing mine at clvl 32. A quick summary of the major v1.10 design changes would be: Death Sentry nerfed (still good); Shadows, like Valks, much improved; kicking much improved; Blade skills much improved (except Blade Shield nerfed and also bugged); some synergistic help in the trap tree elementals; Venom much improved (e.g. fast high damage, doesn't compete with fade/BoS auras; possibly slightly bugged in apparent partial conversion of physical to poison); claw mastery always crit bug removed. CoS (slightly changed) and Mind Blast remain uber skills. Edit: also interesting is that, like the diamond socketed paly shield with automod resists trick to create Iron Golems with immunities, Shadows casting Fade can also go immune (inherent resist + fade resist + rare items rolled resist >= 100).

My best guess about the Assassin would be the same as the Druid: weak in hell difficulty if you focus purely on the elementals (i.e. Assassin trap and elemental charge ups) but pretty good as a fighting class. If we compare the Assassin as a fighting class to the Barb, Paly and Druid we see each having strengths and weaknesses compared to the others. If your playstyle doesn't mind the Assassin's weaknesses (poor DR/HPs compared to the possibilities for the others) then the damage output, v1.10, looks quite good (while being one of the three best crowd control classes in the game). Additionally, since so much was fixed, v1.10, there are several reasonable build/variants for the class now.

If lvl30 skills enter the picture and the goal is clvl 40, I'm be surprised if the tweaker sorc (and I mean the original) is not best overall.

For specialty builds, like the Enchantress, you want to rush them to the mid to high 50s to get maximum utility and you are constrained to not blow skill points except per plan. These, therefore, might be the least flexible and most interesting rushes to finesse. But for the hell hellforge, any clvl 40 will do (at present) so you might be right... a Blaze Sorc upgrading to a FO Sorc with teleport for safety and speed of prey/play seems like a good thing from 30 to 40, in the solo unassisted category (and pretty good in the Static Field Assisted category also, for that matter, post 30).

I did just note, from the AB, the thought that PJav skills benefit from the monster's (lack of) resist at the time of poisoning (and it is a very long duration poison, so this is a relevant technical point). So (at clvl 36+) you can get a nice bonus to poison damage by using a rod or dagger of lower resist charges. While at clvl 30 the PJavs are putting out way more damage a second than the newly minted FO Sorc, it does seem that the Sorc catches up and surpasses pretty quickly, even given the recast timer nerf.

...

One subject we've not touched upon yet, in rushing, is whether the Anya class specific rewards are worthwhile for any class (and what their sensitively to clvl and cap is, for each difficulty level). My recollection about the Akara/Cain and Ormus rings is that they are capped and no big deal (given gambling). But perhaps, if one is already rushing for runes, the class rewards from Anya might suggest a bias toward rushing a particular class.