by q 3 on Sat Feb 04, 2012 3:29 am
I don't really see any great use for Dwarves, except maybe as Dracul-worshiping Blood Mages who strive for near invincibility (but their realistic upper limit is probably no more than ~60 damage reduction + lifesteal even with absurdly specialized tactics, which is nice but won't take you very far in hard dungeons, never mind vicious). Otherwise all you really have is easier level ups at first, and while I haven't done the math I doubt they can compete with Goblins on that front.
Speaking of Bloodmages, the increased reliance on bloodpools is a nasty nerf in vicious dungeons, where he was already at his weakest. If you don't have access to bloodpools, you literally have nothing except a sometimes-useful glyph. Not really sure what was so bad about their original incarnation...
I also don't quite get why Assassins got what is a fairly large buff - particularly when the change to BURNDAYRAZ is already a buff that they can make much better use of than most other classes. Forget Wizards, Elf Assassins of Mystera are now absurdly powerful magic-regen-fighters; just add BLUDTOPOWA and you've got yourself a win button. I just took down Shifting Sands (with Iron Man!) on my first attempt, purist, without the slightest bit of difficulty. (Remember: corrosion applies to fireball damage! I think.)
The change to Transmuters is interesting, at least. My first impression is that they're really only going to be useful with Orcs, and only on a conversion-heavy maxed out preparation run at that, since you'll need to compensate for the -50% damage (among other things). No other race has anything that can really compensate for the gimped stats, except perhaps Dwarves (but then Dwarves have their own problems). They could probably stand to have their ENDISWAL cost reduced to 4 or even 3, at least, and then reduce the bonus per cast to 5%.