Decoy vs. Valkyrie

[Thecla]

Yes you can recast decoy, but she requires LoS to recast, and in maggot lair sometimes can take a few attempts (especially when aiming near corners)

I believe that the valk tank ability is due to her regen and not to her hitpoints.  If she gets poisoned she tends to go down rather quickly, if she is majorly damaged she seems to regen to full in about 5-7 seconds (meaning that poison is almost a requisite to kill a decent level valk)

Well, I do agree that the decoy's impenetrability can be a problem for other players (or even for your own character sometimes!); all I am saying is that it's a manageable problem provided you're aware of it.

As far as the valk's ability to tank is concerned, I think it's much more than her life regeneration, though I'm not sure what makes valks so tough. AFAIK, decoys regenerate life even faster than valk's, but they are not nearly as effective as tanks. Valk's typically have more life (I believe that a decoy's base life is 50% of the caster's life) and perhaps at high levels their equipment is a big factor (especially with defense playing a much larger role in 1.10; and perhaps high lvl valks have better resistances than decoys - I don't know).

Given a little time, high levels of untreated poison da can be really nasty for anything, never mind the fact that it stops rgeneration, whether it's valks, mercs, monsters, player characters, or whatever...