Race / class / skill tier list

[The Many]

These are just my opinions, obviously. I'd like to hear yours as well!

Races

S tier:

Minotaur - Stats are ideal for front row melee or throwing weapons. Head Hunter is a very good perk. Can excel at any class except casters.


A tier:

Lizardman - Stats are slightly worse than Minotaur for melee characters but Endure Elements is a superb perk. Fast Metabolism is actually very good for casters too (energy regen).


B tier:

Insectoid - Stats are pretty lackluster but Quick is a pretty good perk if you combine it with other sources of cooldown reduction (15% from item, 10% from dodge tree if you want). Not a fan of chitin armor though.

Human - Unsurprisingly humans are pretty unremarkable and well-balanced. Skilled can give a nice head start to certain types of characters. I still don't recommend them over the above races though, they're not polarized enough to fill a party niche well.


C tier:

Ratling - The mutation gimmick is fun but let's face it, due to probability you're most likely going to get a lot of useless stats increased, and the actual useful ones will probably amount to maybe +5 optimistically? At the end of the day that barely makes up for their low initial stats in the first place! The extra carry weight is garbage when you could just pick a higher STR race in the first place. I generally put a ratling in my party because I like them thematically and somebody has got to eat all dat cheese, but objectively speaking I think they're the weakest race for sure.

Classes

S tier:

Barbarian - This class is straight up imbalanced compared to the other fighting classes. You want to play a tanky guy who never goes down? Play a Barbarian. You want to crack skulls with heavy weapons and ignore your defense? Play a Barbarian (and your defense will be good anyway regardless). You want to dual wield light weapons and backstab people? Play a Barbarian. Barbs can dish out more damage with either melee or throwing weapons, and they can stay alive longer, than fighters and knights respectively. The only thing Barbs aren't amazing at is spellcasting, and they're not even THAT bad at it.


A tier:

Alchemist - You wouldn't think it but the Alchemist is the best spellcaster class in the game. His HP is better than a Wizard's and equal to a Battle Mage, while his energy pool is equal to the BM and only marginally lower than the Wizard's. The class features he misses out on aren't a big deal at all and he can pretty much cast spells 97% as effectively as the actual caster classes... PLUS he's an alchemist and can gain you huge amounts of stat bonuses by brewing stat potions, as well as providing himself with a bottomless reserve of mana. If you use your alchemist as a caster you may want to put the actual Alchemy SKILL on another character though, since magic can be skill point intensive.Alchemists are very versatile and can use Missile Weapons pretty effectively as well.


B tier:

Fighter - while he can't quite compete on the same level as the Barb, the Fighter is a very solid class. The halved charge time on weapon abilities can vary wildly in usefulness depending on which weapons you're using, but in general it's pretty good. 25% energy reduction isn't very important though, it most likely won't let you do an extra move with your limited energy pool either way. If you like to make heavy use of weapon abilities you could do a lot worse than a Fighter in your party.


C tier:

Rogue - this guy is a bit disappointing because frankly the Barb is a lot better at rogue-like activities. He doesn't gain any particular advantage to backstabs or anything like that. The reduced dual wield penalty is complete garbage because said penalty only affects the BASE weapon damage anyway. It's a massive trade-off for literally a couple of points of damage. The increased crit chance would be nice but you're simply giving up way too much to get it. If evasion tanks and dex-based weapons were much stronger in this game you might be able to make a case to play a rogue but as it stands he just can't compete.

Battle Mage - if a spellcasting alchemist is just a bit too cheesy for you, you could do worse than a Battle Mage. Competent at spellcasting but not as squishy as a wizard, and some nice class features. Ultimately it's just a marginally better variant Wizard I think though; I wouldn't bother trying to actually put this guy in the front row, and you certainly can't afford to waste skill points on a weapon skill.

Knight - Similar to the rogue, this guy is SUPPOSED to fill a certain niche (tanking), but ends up just getting left in the dust by the superior Barbarian. Barb's higher HP pool outweighs the meagre extra protection a Knight gains in terms of survival, and additionally his higher damage output means you'll eliminate threats faster and therefore take less damage to begin with. I can't think of any reason to play a Knight over a Barbarian.

D tier:

Wizard - ironically, the pure dedicated spellcaster class is actually the worst choice for your spellcaster. He's only marginally better at casting spells, with a slight increase to his energy pool. However, an alchemist or battle mage can have an energy pool so close to a wizard's that it makes no matter, and the wizard doesn't have anything else going for him.


F tier:

Farmer - I'm surprised people take this class seriously to begin with; I'm fairly sure it's meant to be a joke/challenge class. Basically what we have here is a class with below-average stats and no skill points who MIGHT be able to gain 3 or 4 levels over the rest of your party temporarily during the early-mid game - and that's if you starve the rest of the poor ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥s. Supposing he's 3 levels higher than the rest of your party, he'll basically have worse or equal stats to those guys, and only 1 more skill point than they do. Pretty soon the XP curve tapers off though and the rest of the party will catch right back up in level. Now he's just a weak guy with no class features and missing 2 skill points. tl;dr: he's mediocre at the beginning and terrible at the end. There's probably SOME way to make good use of a farmer but I certainly haven't found it yet.

Skills

(this is the hardest list to make by far, I think some of this stuff is really up for debate and I need to do more testing to confirm some of my thoughts)


S tier:

Alchemy - This skill is incredibly useful to the extent that it should be a no-brainer for literally every party. There are SO MANY herbs found in the game that whether or not you use an Alchemist, you should at the very least have somebody with this skill. Take it to 5 for the stat potions.

Throwing - A Minotaur Barb with this skill is an absolute powerhouse. Basically it puts out a ton of ranged damage and scales perfectly with Minobarbs, and ammo won't be a major concern. What more do you want?

Fire Magic - Overall I feel this school is the easiest to get through the game with. One rank, for Fireburst, will get you through the early game easily. It wrecks the tree monsters, the mummies, even the Devil Root boss fight. Later on it scales excellently, with Fireball covering you for the mid game and Meteor Storm dominating the late game. Take 5 ranks in this on every caster in my opinion.


A tier:

Heavy Weapons - The best approach for melee. Weapons like Bane are significantly better than anything in the light weapons category. The only disadvantage is that there's no way to dual wield them, but you won't miss it. Taking it to 5 is probably worth it just for the 20% damage for each rank, but Ogre Grip isn't particularly good since you can't dual wield either way and shields aren't all that great.

Air Magic - A pretty decent way to defend yourself on its own, with one rank being very useful for water-type enemies, putting a few ranks into Air Magic is also extremely good because it combines with the other schools to create the three best spells in the game: Frost Bolt, Fireball, and Meteor Storm. Take 1 rank in this as early as you can afford to, and increase it to 3 later once you're ready to transition to Meteor Storm. As a prerequisite for ALL of the good spells in the game, this should be on every mage without question.

Accuracy - Not the most exciting skill, but one with a solid benefit for each rank. Definitely worth taking a couple of ranks on your Minobarbs; their low DEX leaves a lot to be desired in terms of accuracy. And obviously if you want to melee attack from the back row you'll need 2 ranks of this, though there usually isn't much of a reason to bother with that.


B tier:

Missile Weapons - These are to throwing weapons what Light Weapons are to Heavy Weapons. Almost interchangeable, but just slightly worse. A perfectly serviceable combat skill though, and the armor ignore ability is actually quite good. Additionally, there isn't enough ammo to have TWO throwing characters, so Missile would be a good choice for the second guy. Biggest disadvantage is the uneven distribution of missile weapons you'll find throughout the game - you could go a pretty long time with a fairly weak weapon. Definitely take this one to 4; 5 is optional but there isn't much else to put the points into.

Light Weapons - what these guys lack in damage they make up for in speed. When dual wielding you can be throwing out and attack every 1.5 seconds on average, especially if you use cooldown reduction gear and/or abilities. The damage output definitely isn't as high, but if you nail the timing you can "stunlock" enemies in this game and the extra attacks REALLY help with that. Some light weapons also scale with DEX, and while those weapons aren't as powerful as the STR-based ones, a DEX-based dual wield character is still good because he'll pretty much never miss an attack which helps set up the aforementioned stunlocks. I don't think it's the optimal choice, but perfectly viable.

Concentration - Okay, so the actual direct benefits per rank are pretty lame. Most casters will benefit from the extra energy but the special ability is very lame. But you should get this skill anyway! Why? Because certain caster items and spells require ranks in Concentration, and a lot of those items and spells are very useful. QED, get concentration.

Critical - You need to take this if you want to go for backstabs, which isn't an entirely bad idea though it can be very situational. Situational is how I would describe this skill, really. It's not a huge amount of crit chance on its own but if you were to max it and use a weapon like the Scythe I think it would be a VERY nasty combo. Basically this skill is good, but not for everyone.


C tier:

Armor - I'm conflicted about this one. On one hand I think it's a no-brainer that the two characters in your front row should be wearing armor, preferably of the heavy variety. On the other hand though, all this skill actually does to help them WEAR said armor is lessen the evasion penalty. Evasion is pretty terrible in this game and I rarely find my characters (who have ranks in armor) dodging anything at all. I realize that negative evasion is mathetmatically worse than zero evasion, but if you're going to be getting hit 99% of the time anyway, what's the difference? In short, I'm not sure if the actual armor SKILL is all that good. Armor is amazing though. If you do take the skill, 4 ranks is enough. 5 doesn't offer much to make it worthwhile.

Athletics - And the award for most boring skill in the game goes to... Athletics! The extra HP is nice but there are many other ways to get more than enough HP. The extra carry weight is completely useless. Not much to say about this one, there's almost always a better choice you could make.

Water Magic - Big disappointment here. Frost Bolt is a superb spell, especially when combined with backstabs, but is it worth 3 skill points? Ice Shards is too weak to bother with, plus it requires earth magic (eww). If there was one more water spell in the game you could make a case for this skill. Right now it's underpowered. It's worth noting that you'll need 1 point in Water Magic to cast dispel though, which is the easiest way to deal with Air Elementals. This can be put off for a while but you should stick a point here once as soon as you have your basic stuff taken care of.


D tier:

Dodge - Literally the only good thing about this skill is the 10% cooldown reduction, but I have to admit that it is pretty damn good if you combine it with other cooldown reduction sources. You can dip into this one just for the CDR but the main benefit, 3 evasion per level, is absolutely useless and a laughable waste of skill points. Situationally worth taking to 3, NEVER worth taking to 5.

Earth Magic - Just awful. Poison Cloud is a joke and can only be used for cheesing enemies through grates, but there are easier and more fun ways to be cheap in this game. Poison Bolt is mediocre but somewhat decent but why even bother? The better spells are right there waiting to be used.


F tier:
Firearms - Sub-par damage output, finite amount of ammo with no way to ever recover it, chance of blowing up your entire party, frequently jams which makes an entire character useless for a significant time. Firearms bring absolutely nothing to the table that the other ranged skills can't do better. Never worth putting a single point into IMO, but if you have to, you pretty much are forced to take it to 5.

________________

whew, that was a lot to type out. Curious to see what people think of my assessments, and please post your list if it differs from mine!

[Stovich]

You pretty much nailed it, I was thinking about writing such a post or guide for people looking to optimize parties for hard mode / challenge modes, but you summed up pretty much everything I was going to write.

Grimrock 2 is heavily biased towards offensive skills and caters its difficulty to players who maximize their damage output without compromise, and your post reflects that. That isn't to say that the protection stat is bad, but putting points into the armor skill means you are throwing away points you could have spent on offense for a negligible defense bonus.

Funnily enough, the bonus protection gained from having 5 skill points in Armor while wearing a full Meteor Set, is LESS than the bonus gained from putting 1 point into Concentration and casting Shield or drinking a Shield Potion. And yes, Evasion is garbage.

Minotaur Barbarians are so broken, haha.

One thing I would like to point out, is that Humans make good casters. You know that feeling you get when you say "Man I can't wait for my next level so I can cast ____"? Humans with the skilled perk are one step ahead of the game, and get the nicer spells earlier.

You should consider moving this into a guide, the ones available are inferior and are clearly written by people who have not tested their proposals.

[B0Tzerker]

Ratlings are the weakest for sure, I stopped reading there. LOL

[Puzzlemint]

You neglected to mention that a single point in Water is worthwhile for Dispel to deal with Air Elementals.

The Ethereal Blade exists and is an option, but Dispel is easier to get and more effective.

[The Many]

Originally posted by Skirmisher:

Ratlings are the weakest for sure, I stopped reading there. LOL

I'm not saying they're totally terrible or unusable, it actually doesn't matter all that much. But what about them makes them... not the worst? Genuinely curious to hear your take on it; maybe I overlooked something.

[The Many]

Originally posted by A Puzzlemint of Legend:

You neglected to mention that a single point in Water is worthwhile for Dispel to deal with Air Elementals.

The Ethereal Blade exists and is an option, but Dispel is easier to get and more effective.

Excellent point. And if you're already putting one point in, another 2 is pretty easy to justify for Frost Bolt, though I'd still not make it a priority. I still think Water Magic is in about the right place on the tier list but I'll add that note.

[Stovich]

You are also missing Battlemage & Wizard. I agree that Alchemist is the best class for delegating magic to. Battlemage is about C-tier, and Wizard is D-tier.

[The Many]

Originally posted by (+__::) Stovich:

You are also missing Battlemage & Wizard. I agree that Alchemist is the best class for delegating magic to. Battlemage is about C-tier, and Wizard is D-tier.

Yeah and I was missing critical for a while lol, I did this list at work so I was in a rush

[Stovich]

Also... Force Field *is* the best & most reliable crowd crontrol spell in the game, and only costs 35 energy. It may sound silly, but putting 2 concentration on more than one character really opens up your party's ability to manage unpredictable crowds on Ironman / Single-use Crystal mode. I couldn't imagine doing Hard + Ironman + Single-use crystal without taking advantage of this.

[The Many]

I haven't used much Force Field yet but obviously there's a lot of potential there. I think a Fighter could easily justify taking concentration since he'll be using a lot of special attacks, and the Force Field benefit would just be gravy.

I think I will eventually make this into some kind of guide; thanks guys for pointing all that stuff out.

[ShiveringSun]

My experience playing the GOG version agrees very closely with the OP... My expereince with the Ratling has been very good though. At lvl 14, at least 10 bonus attributes have been dex, 1 str and the rest vit, which worked out very well with ranged weapons and alchemist class. Add in the cheeses and he now has 35 dex!

Maybe I just got lucky, but could it be that the free attribute bonuses are skewed toward dex?

[B0Tzerker]

I created a thread where I claim Ratlings are better as magic users than Insectoids and show some results. Basically, STR is the least important attribute to a magic user. Ratlings start with a 6, Insectoids start with an 11; 5 wasted points. Ratlings can mutate attributes where Insectoids are locked. Sure there's items to increase attributes, but they're available for both races so it cancels out.

As to the argument that mutate will get a lot of useless stats, I'm not ready to agree. I haven't payed attention to how the attributes have been leveled up, but my two level 11 Ratlings are still heavily weighted in willpower (wizard) and dexterity (rogue).

[The Many]

Originally posted by ShiveringSun:

My experience playing the GOG version agrees very closely with the OP... My expereince with the Ratling has been very good though. At lvl 14, at least 10 bonus attributes have been dex, 1 str and the rest vit, which worked out very well with ranged weapons and alchemist class. Add in the cheeses and he now has 35 dex!

Maybe I just got lucky, but could it be that the free attribute bonuses are skewed toward dex?

I think it's more that Dex is higher to begin with, so you'll end up with a lot in the end. It's possible that you got SUPER lucky though, but obviously players won't be able to depend on that. If it was possible to manipulate the stat gains by save scumming I'd argue Ratlings are extremely good, but with RNG involved it kind of puts a damper on the whole thing.

[ShiveringSun]

Hmm... perhaps the bonuses are skewed depending on which class the Ratling is?

[Stovich]

more likely that the RNG algorithm creates probability bias based upon the user-picked stats. My ratling missile-weapons rogue ended with a ton of bonus dexterity from mutation.

[The Many]

Originally posted by Skirmisher:

I created a thread where I claim Ratlings are better as magic users than Insectoids and show some results. Basically, STR is the least important attribute to a magic user. Ratlings start with a 6, Insectoids start with an 11; 5 wasted points. Ratlings can mutate attributes where Insectoids are locked. Sure there's items to increase attributes, but they're available for both races so it cancels out.

You don't have to tell me casters don't need STR, lol. But I think insectoid has some other benefits even if you're right that Ratlings can get to a higher willpower stat. The "Quick" perk is underrated I think; 10% really adds up when you think about it.

As to the argument that mutate will get a lot of useless stats, I'm not ready to agree. I haven't payed attention to how the attributes have been leveled up, but my two level 11 Ratlings are still heavily weighted in willpower (wizard) and dexterity (rogue).

I'm working under the assumption that it's truly random at every level up. If there is any rhyme or reason to it and there's some way to manipulate or predict the stat gains, that would be a huge factor and I'd have to reevaluate Ratlings.

You've given me some stuff to think about, definitely. Note that I put them in C tier though, not D or F - I don't feel the race balance is anywhere near as wonky as the skill/class balance.