Stilettoeer Check-In

So it has been about a year since I made a big deal about the stiletto and it appears that the pit is now littered with needles, like medical waste on a beach.

My stilettoeer EVISCETRYX is doing quite well, as he is the result of years of tweaking stats and strats and trains. I've historically been going elf elf elf with mine, but I've been seeing quite a few halflings with the weapons, in addition to some humans and helves. I had a horc that was to run with 'em but I got convinced to give him a flail instead, and now he's dead after 4 weeks of life.

This design was made to counter the dominance of CS builds that had been flooding the arena for several years, and if nothing else, it seems to have cut down on the number of CSers if not just for the fact that people are experimenting with the stiletto.

Clearly the next big thing needs to be an effective counter to the stilettoeer. Has anyone had any particular trouble with their stilettoeers when facing a type of opponent? Maybe this is where the buckler can come into play. Useless against all others, but fast enough to parry stiletto lunges. heheheheh

Can you imagine an arena filled with triple buckler and triple stiletto warriors? bwahahahahahhahahha

No I don't find any particular weapons that counter stiletto, but I do think I fare worse with them against certain strategies perhaps.

I have 4 now, 3 of which are Halflings. 2 Hlings are around 60 fights and the other 2 are newbies. Of my older guys the bigger, size 14, Trog, has a way better record than the size 5, Soneofabish, likely just because you take some shots running Calc Attack, though he also has a higher Dex. So far their weakness seems to be the weakness of CA; if you're faster than me, I'll get smooshed. I need to move into some other styles with them but my few forays away from CA fell pretty flat so far.

Give wall of steel a try and watch those needles fly!!!

I haven't tried TK with 'em.

Be sure to check out the exploits of gPleb5 over on Smacktalk in the Public Gladiator tab. He lived just over 50 fights with some weird stats, but it might give you some ideas.

Maybe I'll try a little TK with the Halfers; I tend to think WS doesn't work great with Halflings, though at this point I can't really remember if that's an imagination bias of mine or an observational one I always want them to lunge.

I have one halfling using a stiletto and he's kind of a freak. High str/con/int coupled with low dex. Definitely not a stilettoeer build.

Another fun thing to try is a stiletto/shield combo. I've had best luck with elves and target shields (73-36-5, 27-9-2), but I'm also trying human (16-10-0 tower), halfling (46-34-1 tower) and horc (1-0-0 target).

This rollup seems a bit more murdery than my standard stilettoeer build, but that could be due to the higher str needed for the shield. FLAVOR OF PAIN is my most murderous stilettoeer at 4 kills in 84 fights, but that might also be due to her (sort of) high starting pre of 9.

WoS is very effective with Stiletto. So is CA though.

Just now starting to use Lunge with them, maybe Decoy soon.

A high dex elf running WoS with stilettos tends to ruin opponents. The increased attack rate from WoS, combined with the insane speed of the stiletto, and having a higher dex than your opponent, can make for some pretty quick fights.

I even tried slash for a bit... winning more than losing and delivering some perms along the way. Stilettos -almost- make slash viable again. KETSCH with his stiletto/target shield had the best luck with slash, though he's moved on from it now. He ran it as his primary, opening strategy for about 25 weeks somewhere around 60ish to 80ish fights, after amassing a good number of skills.

I find it highly likely that both stiletto and scythe are included on elves racial bonus list. Based on my observations so far.

I've been thinking I need to get another scythe elf running after our conversations and seeing what a badass Fusion's FALLOUT is.

Scythe is super great for disarming and just like the stiletto, it has an armor punching ability.

Another year on and I'm finding once solid dwarven CS builds struggling in the current arena. It seems the stiletto punched into the formerly impenetrable armor of the dwarf CS build, and from that crack, a slew of formerly unusable weapons have wedged their way into the arena. I'm seeing a proliferation of knives, daggers, hatchets and other fast, light weapons. We shall soon see the longterm viability of such weapons in a faster, lighter armored pit.

Things are to the point, where I consider high dex to be essential to almost every warrior build. Otherwise, the sands are a meatgrinder for the slow gladiator and the monsters are fed a steady stream of what used to be viable, low dex, CS builds.

EVISCETRYX had the misfortune of facing OFFSPRING in his bid for glory. Needles to say, the fight was a predictable, entirely one-sided affair. A fizzle at the end of an otherwise solid pit performance.

KETSCH, my stiletto/shield hybrid experiment died due to manager neglect. Remember folks, if you want to experiment with tweak, don't forget to change it back if the tweak doesn't work.

Despite my top two stiletto users snuffing it recently, I still have a host of other stiletto users, including (finally!) a horc stilettoeer, who is not off to a bad start (17-7-0), and finally a halfling stilettoeer, though her pre is a bit high (24-15-1).

Keep an eye out, as I am pumping out a new batch of anti-stilettoeers. If these builds work, it could make life very tricky for the abundant, fast/light gladiators.

When "your" new build is revealed I'll screenshot 2 times in the last 3 years I suggested it on FB messenger

=p

It may be that it is only becoming as relevant now because of the shift in weapon usage overall.

But yeah look for mine and for TAKAMURA's builds of same type coming soon as well. One is already poised to do it just needs to STR up a few more points.

I have several warrior builds bouncing around in my head, but they pretty much fall into two categories. One category is being released Sunday (with a preview from this turn already), with more to follow, there being two gladiator builds from this category of anti-stilettoeers.

Alright well I have been shooting the swordbreaker idea at you for a while. Even as offhand say Shortsword/Swordbreaker or stiletto/swordbreaker.

So there!

Given the apparent Keeper tweaks to weapons, who knows which weapons might pack more of a punch? Historically, the sb has been a very weak weapon, but the pit has changed.

Just over a year since the last round of commentary... let's see how things have been going?

I have been noticing in increase in knife users, and I must say, Gern and Nads have been pumping out some vicious gladiators with that weapon.  I was so impressed that I had to make my own knife user, in the same spirit as my stilettoeers: weak, fast and not stupid.  My attempt is currently 25-9-0 (whar murders?) and seems to have pretty good mojo.  Hopefully he will still be around in a year or so when we next check in on stilettoeers.

My horc and halfling stilettoeers have been disappointing, clocking in at 49-32-0 and 50-46-1 respectively.  Having gone 32-25-0 and 26-31-0.  

My "bigger stronger" stilettoeer variant CERATOPSIAN may end up being my longest lived stilettoeer.  I attribute his success to my relatively recent work with dumb gladiators (starting int of 4-7).  RATCHET (143-92-7) [pickaxe horc] was my first success with a dumb gladiator (starting int 7).  I've been getting better with the dumb dumbs: IMMOVABLE OBJECT 71-29-4 (starting int 4).  RATCHET hit 100 fights just behind IO at 70-30-5, but he had way more perms (which was ultimately his undoing).  Looking back through my archives I see that at 93 fights RATCHET's perms looked like:

Has a bothersome (2) injury to the Primary Arm
Has a bothersome (2) injury to the Head
Has a troublesome (4) injury to the Chest
Has a painful (5) injury to the Abdomen
Has an annoying (1) injury to the Secondary Leg

Wow!  That is... terrible.  And I also see he was behind IO in skills training, despite the higher int.  Hmmm... maybe I should try a dummy elf stilettoeer.

15-17-15-7-3-14
13-17-17-7-3-14
14-18-17-5-3-14 (favorite)
14-17-17-4-3-16

As for stilettoeer counters?  I don't think the swordbreaker is shattering blades fast enough to be considered a counter.  I'm still betting on strong/fast/large weapon gladiators to do the trick.  Results, however, are still mixed.

I think you need to have swrdbrker mastered, in tandem, on Decoy if you wanna see a lot of broken blades.

And in general, there is still no build in the pit right now that contends with my BS Hling builds.

Hmmmm... do you see the bs halfling as a counter to the stilettoeer? Have you had many matchups between the two? As Dux would say, the best counter to a style is one that MURDERS. Halflings and murder don't exactly go hand in hand, with the most murderous halfling ever only hitting 9 kills.

The majority of my kills in the last 4 months is from BS Hlings I think. And yes I think I do well in head to head v. stilletoers. So do my swrbrkr elves.

But... are they killing stilettoeers? And aren't bs halflings a large chunk of your stable? It would make sense that you would be getting lots of murders from them, then. Imagine if they were bs helves... you'd have even more murders! I'll have to run the numbers and see what I've been murdering lately (not that I've been murdering much).