My Archetype Ranking

[Kira]

I avoided any discussion around archetype comparisons, because I feel the game is amazingly balanced and the archetypes offer a great blend of unique skills and abilities, with just enough overlap between the archetypes to offer options for similar builds. A Bard focusing on combat skills will play similar to a medium armor Fighter, you can develop sword Fighters and Rogues almost interchangeably if the objective is melee damage, a dagger mage has a very similar core mastery set as a stabby rogue, and so forth. Amazingly replayable, with tons of nuances.

That said, as I'm growing older in the game into arguably one of the few BT4 grannies, perhaps I will be forgiven for one last reminiscent indulgence in which I shamelessly argue for my personal opinion as if it were fact... :)

As there are no bad Archetypes in the game, I'm going to make an arbitrary scale starting with Amazing and ending with... the most amazing. 😀 Note that generally speaking the best party will combine all Archetypes, i.e. adding a fourth Practitioner to a party that already has three is going to be less optimal than adding a first Bard to the same party, because a lot of the synergies are found between the archetypes.

Starting at the "bottom" rank of "only" amazing:

5. Amazing - Practitioner

Now, it is perhaps my favourite archetype in terms of flexibility, you can do almost anything with practitioners, you can tank via summons, deal massive damage, use crowd control, and generally have a plethora of fundamentally different build paths - so much so, that I know for a fact that you can finish the game on Legendary with six differently built practitioners. They are extremely easy to include in a party and most players will actually add two of them into a party of six, because they are so useful in controlling the battlefield, taking care of enemy spellcasters, and offering very focused and flexible damage when needed against pesky foes. So why do I put them at the bottom of the ranking? Despite all they bring to the table, Practitioners help, they are fun, but not as essential as some of the other archetypes.

4. Slightly more Amazing - Fighter

Taunt is probably among the strongest and most useful skills in the game. Guardian can soak up a lot of damage to your party. A Veteran can get a cheap but substantial damage bonus on every hit. Vanguards offer great flexibility in equipment. Fighters can be built as melee damage dealers, as tanks, as healers, as tacticians who have great control over the positioning of the enemies and the allies, and are always going to be very useful. You can easily take 2-3 Fighters and have each of them fulfill a fundamentally different but essential role. Their build flexibility is close to the Practitioners, but what they offer the party is perhaps even more impactful.

3. Even more Amazing - Bard

The Bard feels like the character Bard's Tale IV is "calibrated" for. They have their own twist on anything doable in the game. One of the strongest damage dealers, one of the best support/healers, great for crowd control, and very intuitive and fun to build. No wonder the abundance of topics on this forum pondering whether it's even possible to finish the game without the Bard? (It is possible, but typically much less fun than with a bard... or two. Or six? 😅)

2. Again even more amazing - Cleric

Although not available for a starting character, you can "advance" up to three, though you can also find up to two Paladins on the way characters into clerics or rather a Paladin, Preacher, Sage or Monk. The Cleric tree offers a set of fairly unique abilities that perhaps don't look particularly powerful at first glance, but are really boosting some builds. The Cleric skills, especially Change Fate, offer a lot of out-of-the-box options that combine really well with other abilities and can really supercharge a party's staying power and potential.

1. The most amazing - Rogue

Is it possible to play through BT4 without a Rogue? Absolutely. It speaks to the balance and complexity of the game that none of the Archetypes are mandatory. That said, the Rogue feels to be on a completely different plane of existence compared to anything else, mainly thanks to the stealth abilities. I used a lot of Rogues (and Monks) in my various play-throughs and I always felt they were worth their weight in gold for the party. In fact the party needs the Rogue more than the Rogue needs the party, see what can be done with a single Rogue (legendary difficulty, enraged redcap solo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pszBZhEsSEo ).

[Chilkoot]

Great writeup!!

[bydlaq]

I am really disappointed with the balance, i did start on the hardest and did ask for few advices on forum to make it easier road, but it was easy no matter what. Because the balance.
Follower (i forgot the name) rogue was doing almost all damage and kills. And everyone else including 2 warriors, one bard and one mages were just supporting him.
The last party member i forgot the name, imp knife guy was second best, mostly melting armor tho.
It was just one run, so i didn't try same encounters with different setups tho.

[Kira]

Originally posted by bydlaq:

I am really disappointed with the balance, i did start on the hardest and did ask for few advices on forum to make it easier road, but it was easy no matter what. Because the balance.
Follower (i forgot the name) rogue was doing almost all damage and kills. And everyone else including 2 warriors, one bard and one mages were just supporting him.
The last party member i forgot the name, imp knife guy was second best, mostly melting armor tho.
It was just one run, so i didn't try same encounters with different setups tho.

Damage potential has nothing to do why I put Rogue on top, it's mainly their stealth, especially the Infiltrator skill. Even though Rogues start strong and are very straightforward to build for damage (you need to match which crit skills go with which attacks, that's basically the hard part), most archetypes will have gimmicks or gear later on that will at least slightly outperform the Rogue in terms of damage. The threshold is somewhere when Razor Strops stops being a no-brainer, because you are starting to shift from raw damage (that scales with Strength and as such significantly increased by the also Strength-scaling Razor Strops bonus damage) to rending/melting/statuses. You can still keep using the Rogue as you did before, but if you prefer, you can probably get a bit more out of someone else.

If the game was easy on Legendary, that's actually a good thing, it means that you found and used synergies that most people don't find at least not on their first play-through. If you beat Haernhold on Legendary without abusing any of the obviously exploitable skills (Cavorting, Duotime) then you fared better than the vast majority of players who could either only beat Haernhold on lower difficulty, or had to rely on some of these exploits to clear it.

Now, from experience I can say that you need one or two dedicated damage dealers in your party, and that can be a Rogue but it can equally be any of the other archetypes. It's not that the damage dealer is better, it is simply that what they do is very visible, whereas if all your fighter does is stand there and tank damage, you might think they are inferior, even though their role in the party is probably even more critical than that of the damage dealer. Any archetype can deal damage, slightly differently but they all can; I used different characters in each of my play-throughs as my main damage dealer. I think my Bard did objectively the most amount of damage followed by my Practitioner, Paladins are in the middle and Fighters and Rogues are kind of decent but not at the top by the end game. Still you can totally beat the game with one of these as your main damage dealer if you know what you're doing.