Sorry about the Spartan Grapple confusion. I was probably typing that part "Spartan Grapple/Inharmonic Helix" with regards to them being less "game-breaking" for the victims(compared to the bigger ones above), and then went into a tangent about the lag. Inharmonic Helix/Trial of Aggression are pretty bad in and of themselves, but it's really the combination of ToAgg and Spartan Grapple that can totally wipe the floor with the Barbarian's opponent. Combine that with Savage Assault giving a mini-bash every 5(?) rounds, on top of Bash proper, plus whatever else, you're not running from a Barbarian anytime soon. Especially if he faded you first so that you'd be even more vulnerable.
Silent Strike is specific to Mahoutsukai. Strike of the Quiet Arts is the generic Ninja version(presumably, an Ascended Maho/whatever will have 4 ways to fade you, which MIGHT be powerful, but nowhere near a Mordant Ruan/whatever whose generic fade is MUCH shorter in prevention, dunno about the Mordant specific's prevention)
Awakening of the Guard/Barrier Behest: Both block just about everything, as far as I know. Awakening of the Guard is in some ways more powerful, in that NR is used for just about every damage calculation in the game. Barrier Behest is more powerful in another way(up to 90{100?}% physical immunity and the same level of magic immunity), in that if you do more damage than the Poliir's Awakened NR, you will bypass the "tickling" phase, but the Barrier will always reduce it to 1. However, Barrier Behest can be bypassed by Black Magic Attacks(no idea if there's any other elemental type that is not covered by either Physical or Magical Immunity)
*Just about every "high damage" spammable lag move like hurricane kick/fireball/ice blade/etc. is a combo of up 5 mini-attacks, each of max 1k or so, hence the "tickling(5)" fireballs/hurricanes/what-have-you, as each mini-attack is reduced to 1(or low double/triple digits, in the case of fighting Awakening).
Riposte is really only a problem if you have Improved Parry at 100%(to bypass the "Will this even trigger?" step) and a very high % chance to trigger(on top of the Jerof race's stuff I guess). Also, limited to 1 Nojohr subclass. Unholy Rapture is for the whole class of that tier, if memory serves. Still, someone wielding either of them gets to play the classic bully-game of "Stop hitting yourself!"
