Forum:500 Role Difficulty

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Since 5.0.0 has introduced many role and mechanics changes it's probably time to restart the role difficulty debate –– what are your personal opinions? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Loresend (talk • contribs) 2026-05-26T23:43:27‎

Valk has had a nerf with a worse starting weapon and less access to Excalibur, although I think it's still the easiest role. Surprisingly, I think Healer is also harder -- gaining experience for healing your pets can cause you to gain levels, increasing monster difficulty and making the protection racket more difficult. Chaotic Priests get the +1 Demonbane as their first sacrifice gift, rather the mostly junky chaotic artifacts. Roles with 8-10 base penalty can now achieve reliable spellcasting with a staff rather than swapping to a robe, so that's a plus for them. Other than that, I don't think too much has changed with regards to differences between roles.--Darth l33t (talk) 21:27, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

I feel like Healer is that much harder only if you view it through specifically the lens of the protection racket, which is a viable path still but not at all mandatory: experience gain is equal to the amount of HP healed, so the task there is to avoid healing more than 20 HP—I can't speak to the difficulty of it but I can mention that you start with a wand of sleep like usual. :v Healer also has some pretty decent early weapons it can train, the aklys is still nice and I think scimitars get better for them with the skill merge: actual combat is gonna be tricky as it is for non-melee roles but you have plenty of potions and spell power to leverage if you're slow and careful about it. --Umbire the Phantom (talk) 03:09, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

Counterargument is that healing potions spawn more often early on now, which is basically a relative nerf for healers' starting inventory (unless you think starting with them id'ed is important, which is a valid point –– I just died from quaffing a sleeping pot that I thought was healing due to its abundance). Similarly the Valk's original closest contender Barbarian was relatively nerfed since poison was nerfed (no longer instakills, saving grace nerfs poisonous traps, killer bees have increased difficulty). I agree the weapon nerf hits hard, but the Gehennom buff means what you get for the quest matters more now, which works in the Valk's favor (although that means the Wiz has a better argument as well, especially with the early game being comparatively safer) --Loresend (talk) 15:57, 28 May 2026 (UTC)