Favourite non- Tier 1 combinations?

[Tinker]

Here's an idea, let's pull it up the flagpole and see who salutes it! What are some of the silly combinations that people still gladly play, despite not necessarily being top notch?

For example I've recently been toying around with the Elf Rogue. On paper it looks really silly. Though pack on it a deity like Mystera, and it's quite decent (not top notch, but can be close). The idea is to ignore health, and go for a standard 3x-4x fireball + first strike melee finisher hit. Most foes who are problematic for one of these attacks are usually susceptible to the other. Foes who have lots of health usually have low damage, so the character can even take a hit from them. Definitely different from a machine like the Orc Rogue.

The other combination I catch myself playing is the Halfling Tinker. Yes I know Tinkers are better with permanent bonus races like Human, but still, it's kind of my fall-back guy if I don't have any good ideas what to play. Potions are pretty cool get-out-of-jail free cards, they can facilitate higher level kills, power shennanigans (TM Lujo), and anything left for the end game can be used to grease the bossfight. And all Tinkers are, well, pretty cool (nuff said ).

Lastly, I've had some decent success lately with the Orc Thief of GG. I normally play Thieves as Gnomes or Halflings, but it's an interesting fact that a Thief does the same amount of damage on the first hit as the Rogue, and although it lacks the other benefits of the Rogue like First Strike and Dodge (two super-powerful traits), it does have more health, more mana, more of everything basically. In a sense, in the average fight, being able to tank one additional hit is comparable to having first strike. Thief relies more on glyphs but luckily he also has more of that. GG is just a low-profile deity, good for a piety farm, nice to boost health/mana further if desired, and the +5 damage / +14 health from Humility also helps; optionally can be left later on for someone who doesn't mind opportunistic potion quaffs.

And very lastly, there's the Goat of Dracul. Since we established that Goats are peaceful (read: violently psychopathic), vegans (read: blood-thirsty cannibals), what deity goes better with them than Dracul? Dracul is surprisingly lenient once a few rules are obeyed, and the rules can still be broken when he is not watching... Plus, he offers the decent combination of not needing a glyph to interact with him; granting some boons that can be picked up already on low level; not losing out on half the fun when he's not watching; and having a non-prohibitive set of pet peeves.

Others?

[Lujo]

Wow these all look really, really nice! And pretty smart, too!

Can I comment on them first?

The Elf Rogue is really clever! If you're not going into melle anyway, what with being a dedicated spellcaster, why not have an auto getindare and possibly rather nice popcorn cleaning ^^ Mystera is an all-in-one dedicated spellcaster kit, elves are all basicaly bargain sorcerers, looks hella legit. Also possible spin-off is starting out with Jehora and just dumping an health potion or two into his health boon. Might actually make a really cool cauldron class, not necessarily top tier because of a lack of steady potions, but still

Halfilng tinker sounds like the king of "and then I noticed X lying on the floor and I though, hey, I can use this", with X being a huge variety of things ^^ All halfings are kinda like that, but the tinker can really blow it out of the water.

Orc Thief of GG sounds about as solid as a concrete outhouse.

Well, mine would be, I guess:

Halfling bloodmage of Drac - the only real reason he isn't truly top tier is because he's more of a full-on spiker than an endurance run guy, but boy does the little bugger spike. Convert up a ton of lifesteal, possibly start out with some mean health boost (even the pendant will do), go really, really nuts. Also loves Blue Bead for even more popcorn munching goodness.

Dwarf Transmuter - with B2P. I think I beat Vicious Steel with this once. Dat healthpool.

Dwarf fighter. Yep. Big health = ding goodness. Also rather fun with all sorts of Drac nonsense, dwarves generally are.

Goblin Fighter of TT - except he's technically top tier, but just not mentioned very often. Spam learning like mad, play it smart, ding like an idjt.

Pissorff Orc Bloodmage, prefferably with crystal ball. That's a lot of Pissorff. I've actually taken this to Namtar's, was fun. If you run into a big blackspace subdungeon you go mad with power.

And once I get a bit further into the new kingdom, I'll surely remember / discover more.

[Astral]

Very nice stuff, and I love them all. Cleared quite a few VT runs with the Orc Thief of GG myself. If you're willing to convert your potions you can get insane piety.

Before I unlocked Transmuters I did scouting runs mostly with Halfing Tinkers. Even if you retreat you can steal something, convert walls and loot a secret sub. And your glyphs will be converted into sellable healthpotions.
Just to mention, my first Vicious dungeon victory was done by them too. I wanted to scout DL, and saw that there's an unreachable sub in the middle. Didn't want to lose to a gimmick later, like on my 1st NC run, so I decided to kill the Demonlords to find out what is in there and only retire after that. But once I faced the Avatar I had so many potions and other resources that I could win anyways.

Now here's some of my weird strats.

Somewhat similar to the Elf Rogue, you can try an Elf Bloodmage of TT. TT will give you a Getindare, you can precast it and spike monsters with the combination of relatively high mana and your health points via B2P. You can worship TT from lvl 1 and you will be fine. Unlike most worshippers, you only care about several points of learning to ding a lot off your popcorn. Works well in hard dungeons, but in VT you need silly moves - like requesting the potion boons just to consume your fatter popcorns

Orc Rogue of EM with prepped Platemail and RBS - also known as the Panzerrogue. You invest highly in Vineforms to further increase health and protections. With the use Entanglement you can still retain your 1st strike
Not an overwhelming strat, but becomes really cool if you find a Dracul too and pick up some lifesteal.

Halfdragon of EM. You get an Imawal to have a better chance at knocking monsters through walls, benfit twice from corrosion and if you feel like you can cheese the dungeon with the plantcannon technique.

Goblin Monk of Dracul with Vampiric Blade and Patches. You earn piety faster thanks to your lifesteal, so grabbing Blood Shield won't be hard. Patches will improve your stats and when he gives an annoying status effect you just level up.
If you're feeling lucky, you could try the same with a prepped Draning Blade, beeing a goblin will help you survive the early game and stumbling across the Vampiric Blade can turn you close to invincible - on top of being a vampire who is less likely to kill his bloodcows.
Works somewhat smoother with Taurog, but then you miss out on sanguine.

Dwarf Bloodmage of Binlor. High health, high resistances and lots of refills. The damage isn't bad either. But a tad bit inefficient for VT.

Orc Sorcerer of JJ. Nothing gets cheeky this easy in VT runs, but you have to come up with something for the lategame to succeed.

Halfling Pala of Dracul with VB/Orc Pala of TT with DS. The former becomes a regenerating Vampire, the latter is a Gorgon with unnerfed damage. If you want to follow TT from the start you're better off with Fabulous Treasure + Transmutaion Seal.

That's all that I could remember for now, will post some more later.

[Lujo]

Oh god, the elf TT bloodmage looks like something you use when you want to really burninate stuff. Now that's a true alternative to Mystera Bloodmages XD (and also a very good illustration of one good approach to the eternally undervalued TT prepage).

EM Halfdragon also looks like a complete boss! Before they changed the way the lowest level in GT/VGT looks, I used to use IMAWAL + Binlor knockback to slap Horatio into endless walls with a Gorgon.

Lifestealing Goblin VB Monk has got to be awesome! That's why res stacking isn't == to regen fighting, with that much resists, you ding and bloodswell for a LOT of hits ^^

On that note - I'm not sure anything in the game facetanks like a Halfling monk/berserker because, as we all know, every halfling is a Dracul in disguise. That thing is the only non Cydstep build which can reliably go self-cannon in the Labyrinth (afaik).

One thing that doesn't get mentioned very often is the res stackign Crusader. All his boons apart from the popcorn munching damage bonus are killer regen fighting boons, his only issue is that he doesn't have any resists. Which is why you bring patches, which you are imune to, get 4 altars by default to more easily score that deadly Taurog + Drac combo, and go positively nuts in endurance runs ^^

(Mind you, the damage bonus makes the Crusader a crazy popcorn muncher, too, and with as many altars as he gets, you can play the guy in a wide variety of ways).

[Blovski]

@Lujo, stacking Crusader is definitely Tier 1. Can beat Vicious Naga City or Vicious Anything Else without a tremendous amount of luck.

My ones:

Halfling/Gnome Transmuter of JJ. Yes, you can spike VHOS with these.
I'm a big fan of the Paladin of EM for VHOS and Hexx Ruins and maps like that with odd little rules. Gardening is a fun minigame.
I like messing around with purist elfzerkers but I'm finding them tricky to leverage. I also really like anything with TT+Fake Beard prep.

[Astral]

To me EM Paladins are top tier. They are really great for grabbing VTs all over the place. You get really cheap Vineforms/Greenbloods, the latter can be used to remove curses midbattle too and you could brick curse bearers with Imawal for the same effect. Counts a lot when you bring DS, and patches for a few levels (Paladins only get hurt by the manaburn much, but you could refill some mana with Clearences - you'll have tons).

The recommended race is either Human or Elf. You may be wondering what synergy does an Elf has with all this? Plenty.
You should really try crazy res and health stacking with a Dwarf Pala once - nothing kills Vicous stuff with brawling that brainlessly. When you go Elf you play an upgraded version of that, you can stack mana cheaper and turn it into health with Halpme when needed, but you only turn to health as much as you want - unlike a Dwarf who has no control over it.
Being an Elf with Imawall and slowed popcorn mean you'll ding a lot with your high max mana for tons of Halpmes or fireballs.

People assume, that since Clearance refills flat mana it's not that good for an Elf. They don't realize that the higher your max mana is the more Clearances you can take in a row - your chances of getting screwed by path blocking plants decreases a lot. Thanks to this Elfs are highly compatible with EM even in cramped dungeons.

Out of curiosity, have you tried spamming Clearances with a Pala for boss battles? Getting 100+ mana is trivial, that's a lot of health refills/fireballs.

[Lujo]

^ Of course, on the last one.

One thing to note with dudes who get a huge mana pool early is that if you have IMAWAL and ENDISWAL, as long as you're still exploring this turns into both XP, temporary resists and gold. On the Goblin Mystera Sorcerer, if you happen to run into the glyphs it also gets you piety. The gold doesn't look like much, but hey, it's a free potion / cheap item in the long run, and you can purchase the cheap item early and still have enough gold for what you run into later.

[Astral]

It's good you mentioned it Lujo. EM Palas could bring a Bearmace for guaranteed knockback and combined with the more gold prep (in case you don't want Patches) that's +2 gold/statues. This is quite a good way to give the EM Gnome Pala acidcasters a boost when trying to achieve supreme slayer.

EM Halfdragon's don't even need the bearmace for this.

[Tinker]

[Astral]

Unfortunately you can't find prepped items in shops. It would lead to all sorts of hilarity with certain builds. Like double Rock Heart Orc Wizards casting 1 MP Pisorfs.