Cue the trumpeteers!

okay, im doing a list of chars and their counter chars for anyone wishing to know (this is for 49 duels but may be applied for different levels)
Its in alphabetical order



Blizzard Sorceress
Strengths: Blizzard acts like a shield vs chasers, high damage attack, teleport, ice blast for quick hitting attack
Weaknesses: not as fast as a fireball sorc or orb sorc, blizzards are easy to escape, no long range attack
Counter: other sorceresses should beat this, bowazons too.

Bone Necromancer
Strengths: magic damage attacks, able to make barricades/fort with bone wall, clay golem gives slow down, bone spirits are homing missles, high physical damage shield from bone armour
Weaknesses: Bone spirit is so slow moving most do not hit, low life, cannot tele like sorceress, high mana cost
Counter: Any sorceress, FoH pala, cs zon, charger, maybe pois ama or rabies druid.

Bow Amazon
Strengths: High damage attack for its long range, Can avoid/dodge, High ias, requires no AR, homing missles, high frw (usually).
Weaknesses: 0 block in bow mode and weak damage in javelin mode, low life
Counter: Charger.

Charged Strike Amazon
Strengths: Fast high damaging attack as well as a potent ranged attack, can dodge melee/ranged attacks.
Weaknesses: High mana cost, Not great life, often beaten by constant dodge/avoid animations. Susceptible to absorbsion (which many barbs have)
Counter: Very fast attack speed melees will do well vs these because of dodge, such as whirl barbs or maybe fury druids; rabies druids could do well if using a high speed weapon like 6x shael axe(rabies then CONSTANTLY attack with fury until they die, do not switch weapon, dont try to run or youll be killed) Anything wearing tgods with high res will pretty much kill these. If you find one with low frw a caster will kill this.

Charger
Strengths: Capable of 1 hit kills, very high damage, high speed, able to desync easily, effective HLD caster killer
Weaknesses: usually low life, chargebug, freezebug, if blocked can be destroyed quickly,
Counter: whirl barbs, blizz sorcs (only if you play well), maybe fury druids and rabies druids.

FireBall Sorceress
Strengths: Strong elemental damage, fast cast speed, teleport
Weaknesses: If ES build then its weak vs elemental attacks (especially poison) if vita build it will be not as weak vs ele but also weak vs physical damage
Counter: Foh pala works well as you do not have to aim making teleport less useful and the ele damage is nice, very high frw melee chars with lots of res (especially chargers) or bowazons should also work.

Fissure Druid
Strengths: powerful multihitting attack, effective vs moving chars, good HLD killer, decent life for a caster with oak sage, effective vs melees.
Weaknesses: Cannot make use of cyclone armour, oak sage is easy to kill making its life quite low, casting delay,
Counter: Because of its casting delay a charger or charge then smite should be able to kill this, a light trapsin should do well as well as FoH pala.

FoH Paladin
Strengths: High damage, lowers resist, fast moving speed and desync with charge, these are really tough.
Weaknesses: stacked res.
Counter: A tank char such as wolf/Barb with very high stacked lightning res and maybe absorb should be able to beat this (MUST HAVE HIGH FRW). Also Kicksins using dragon flight should do well too. Most other chars won't be able to, FoH paladins are the hardest 49 chars around IMO.

Frozen Orb Sorc
Strengths: multiple hitting, lowers res, stays attacking for short time while you can tele away, a full on hit is devistating, long cold duration, low mana cost for spell time,
Weaknesses: easy to avoid lots of hits, slight cast delay, not very effective vs other sorcs (especially FB)
Counter: FoH pala, FB sorc, Cs zon using lightning fury, bowazons.

Fury Druid
Strengths: highest life for this level, fast attack speed, high damage
Weaknesses: limited frw being a tank, slow block, oak sage easy to kill,
Counters: Cs Zon (only if they have slow attack speed), long range casters and fissure druids, rabies druids, Pois amas, light trap assassins (unless they are using abs)

Hammerdin
Strengths: High damaging magic damage attacks, able to be desyncing fags, hammers act like a damage shield vs melee, easy to get max block.
Weakness: hard to hit casters with hammers, easily avoidable unless they desync alot.
Counter: Fireball Sorc, Cs Zon, trap assassin (preferably light), maybe bone necros

Kicksin
Strengths: fast attack speed, can tele attack, lots of hits in short time, knockback, high AR, works well with fire traps, high frw or high res, good vs casters
Weaknesses: low physical damage compared to other melees, lower life than other melees,
Counters: Whirl barb, smiter, fury druid

Poison Amazon
Strengths: Highest poison damage at 49, 1 hit will get pretty much every char to 1 hp with plague, can dodge/avoid, high frw makes it easy to escape attacks, easy to finish the 1hp with a bow switch or to attack long range targets.
Weaknesses: Quite difficult to actually hit with plague especially vs casters, poison javelin has absurd duration, the frw dependent gear makes the chars life low
Counter: Bowazons/Sorceresses and probably casters with long range attacks (not hammerdins or warcry barbs). Do not try to beat these with melee, youll just die. Chargers will probably be able to beat this though.

Poison Necromancer
Strengths: Lowers resists, short duration poison attack, bone armour, clay golem or fire golem
Weaknesses: Nova has short range and doesnt reach its full range straight away, low life, worst of the 3 main poison chars, hard to get the 1hp killing hit vs casters with mdr or tele, cannot tank but cannot go long range
Counter: casters especially sorcs and FoH, trap assassins, bowazons, anything withlonger ranged attacks than poison nova.

Rabies Druid (my personal favourite)
Strengths: able to do one hit kills, can kill/damage without being near target, can tank more than poison ama, Poison spreads (helpful for minions), people call you hacker, antidotes won't fully work, able to survive at 1 hp for a long period, blocking won't help (good for casters), feral rage for added ias, facets cast when you get hit on 1hp yet you don't die.
Weaknesses: has to catch target and be very near them to hit, low life compared to whirl barbs and fury druids, blocking won't help (melees can use 2h weapons now), slow block
Counter: 2 handed whirl barbs, high frw poison amas, sorcs (tele)

Smiter
Strengths: always hits (or 95% of time not really sure), fast speed, lots of damage reduction, unblockable (see weaknesses), able to use charge for non melee duels, moderatly good life. Owns all melees pretty much. good defence and easy to achieve max block + 75 all res. Charge desyncs.
Weaknesses: Hard to catch casters with full block (especially sorcs), charge bug, freeze bug, causes bug on finishing blow where it is able to be blocked also causing facets to be activated (if this happens long enough youll die from blizzards/meteors), yeah they are pretty buggy.
Counter: Sorceress will be able to kill smiters without too much trouble, and the facet bug coupled with a rabies druid (1hp facet bug too) causes so much poison novas being casted you can win without attacking.

Trap Assassin
Strengths: wake of fire with mb causes an almost unescapable fhr lock, lightning traps have good damage, high frw with trap shield makes escaping traps easy, able to block casted attacks if dual claw, effective vs melee.
Weaknesses: susceptible to long range attacks like fireball and arrows, camping with traps isn't very fun, playing offencive with traps isn't very effecive, fire tras have short range and are slow moving.
Counter: Bowazons, Fb Sorcs, FoH palas, as well as fury druids and whirl barbs vs fire traps.

WhirlWind Barbarian
Strengths: Lots of life and resistence, high physical damage and fast attack speed, good res and defence and frw bonus.
Weaknesses: Hard to catch casting/running chars with slow moving whirl wind, whirlwind bug.
Counter: A fireball sorc should be able to take care of this without too much trouble, smiters with lots of CB and physical damage reduction should be able to beat these too. High Frw casters such as bone necs could beat them also aswell as bowazons (barbs block is annoying though). Trap assassins too, but preferably fire trap ones as many barbs use tgods. Also fissure druids.

Uh, that took a while. Im not doing it on hybrid chars, and only chars which are popular at 49, if theres any you think i missed out pm me or post here, or any corrections you think i should make. hope this helps

gz on 1000th posts!!!1111

and, that's a nice list there, espically for beginners asking noob questions

must of took you long ^^

I got my 1000th post today too.

Nice guide!

Also, doesn't blizzard have a quite high mana cost too?

And ww barbs tend to run out of mana quite often.

oh well, i just shut up, that probably took some time to write

This post was edited by head2 on Mar 14 2007 10:08am

didnt realize it was for lvl 49 until you said foh had high dmg... other than that it sounds reasonably close to how lvl 30 duels work too. nice list.

but what do you mean blocking wont work in your rabies guide?

This post was edited by waramp on Mar 14 2007 10:07am

bullshit ~~

ROFL 1000 HAHAHHA, THATS NOTHINGI GOT LIKE 3 K POSTS EVRY MONTH

This post was edited by PornstarMephi on Mar 14 2007 10:28am

nice with 1000 posts

and like someone said above ... this can be very helpful for alot of people

Kinda.

Smiters are good vs. Sorcs.

Boney, Fissure, Windy, Hammerdins > Smiters

thats new to me, unless you are talking about a 9x res abs smiter ;d

vs a sorc with no block

dunno, there are lots of better (smiter) players than me

This post was edited by head2 on Mar 14 2007 10:43am

iam a better one and i kill every hdin with a non shield using smite