Tier system for classes.

[Celerity, Executor of Impunity]

Sparked by both my work in modding this game and a discussion that made a different game look much more sophisicated than it actually was.

Arcane Soldier: B-. This class has exactly one good skill, with the rest of him being a hybrid between a weaker Soldier and a Mage whose spell progression and spell ability costs are so delayed that they are non factors in his ability set and power level. Fortunately, that one skill is really good (if you understand its unique mechanics, and the enemy takes damage from fire).

Barbarian: C+. Unparelled at auto attack direct damage. Unfortunately that's not really that relevant in the game. Neither is direct damage itself. He also does fairly well with weapon statuses, but not the greatest.

Bard: A-. An unparelled support character. Out of combat the Bard offers various item related abilities saving you a lot of money and giving you more items indirectly. In combat the Bard offers group buffs, enemy debuffs, and support abilities.

Cleric: A+. The only class I'd consider "necessary". Yes, you "can" go without them. You'll also spend so much on life and condition cures it's not worth it. The class itself is balanced (except Mass Regen, which makes the game a rofflestomp fest), just this ability set is always useful in all situations except those you are easily winning anyways.

Divine Summoner: D-. Also only has one good skill. The difference is the other skills quit scaling well before the end of the game, and the one good skill just gives you more money and items, meaning Mercantilism does it better and comes on classes that also do something else. Also, you're reliant on AI (albeit fairly good AI).

Explorer: B. Mandatory, but I'm ranking Gaulen anyways. His support abilities are extremely strong and necessary in some areas, but focused on well... exploration instead of combat. His combat abilities are somewhat lacking, particularly against poison immune enemies (and there's a lot of those). He does act as a force multiplier like the Bard, but in a much less direct way via gathering large numbers of stat buffing herbs.

Mage: C-. Very useful early in the game and quickly drops off later, unlike most games with both melee and magic. The mage's mid and especially high level abilities have very high costs for what they do, meanwhile a physical attack will deal at least almost as much damage without running the user out of mana in a few shots. Energy isn't really a useful solution when it gives 2 mana each and spells past level 20 cost 60-320 mana. The only unique functionality they offer is AoE and a few support abilities, but the AoEs are very weak.

Paladin: C-. This class is mainly held back by the fact it's a hybrid in a game that requires focus on the character level. Like Arcane Soldier it gets delayed progression on spells, unlike it healing still does something. Aura of Protection is a fairly good skill, though you can get it at lower levels through items.

Soldier: A. Also very useful early in the game, but unlike the Mage doesn't drop off as sharply later. An unparalled melee combatant with a range of special attacks. He only doesn't get the highest rating because he is still largely based on direct damage.

Thief: C. The Thief gets this ranking purely for Shurikens, the best source of bleed as well as traps and locks. It's quite lacking otherwise. That should give an idea how good Shurikens are, particularly during the first half of the game. All three of these abilities become less useful later on though.

Now you can make all these classes work, even Divine Summoner. Just there is a very significant gap between the best and the worst.

[Dongshaker]

Hi! Nice writeup!

I'll also add my thoughts on the classes. I think I largely agree with Celerity, except some stuff. However, I have only completed the game one time on veteran and brought 3 other parties near lvl 25-40, also on veteran. So I really can't vouch for ironman hardcore and have to extrapolate a little here.

Arcane Soldier, B: Flame strike provides lots of DoT to those not resisting fire. Also has special attacks, which for me were bread and butter (especially wounds and bleed). Frost strike can maybe be quite tactical, but didnt use it on veteran.

Barbarian, C: My gut tells me that rage criticals aren't worth it and come into play later. I felt the game was mostly about control and/or DoT-s, so I liked axes/polearms + wounding strike better to soften mobs up and then kill them. However, barb, like soldier, needs 1 pt for weapon levels, and maybe specializing in dual weapons might be a real thing ... haven't tried though.

Bard, C?: Probably nice, but I didnt seem to need him. My Gaulen took merchantilism and I dont know if lategame he's spells are that necessary, though they can be nice buffs. I also wouldnt use requiem, because I wanted to get every bit of gold from enemies with Divine Summoner and therefore needed to reliably control them instead.

Cleric, A: Seems too good for me. Heal, remove status effects, party resistances, mass regeneration. I also put points in polearms, so my cleric provided good amount of wounds and damage as well.

Divine Summoner, A: Best source for additional income (in addition to identify items and merchantilism). I haven't tested it, and tell me if I'm wrong, but if higher exp = higher score then then DS seems absolutely necessary, because more gold = more exp (sacrifice in fountains). In addition, Herald of Alnaet has nice healing, Herald of Raznet can poison quite a lot and I've heard Kersket can provide some tactical benefits.

Explorer, A: Aside from being mandatory, wounding weapons + envenom seems quite strong, and herbalism and knowledge of terrains also seem too good to pass. Also camouflage can probably avoid lots of headache on ironman. I gave Gaulen all extra skill points, so in addition to fighting, I could also use him for disarming, lock picking and merchantilism, so he kinda gave me most utility I needed.

Mage, D: Seems very nice early on, but otherwise maybe only useful for some occasional special tactics (due to wide array of spells). Seems to need lots of potions, which = gold I dont want to waste.

Paladin, A: Maybe subjective, but I really liked them. They seem really versatile: can fight (special attacks), remove status effects, provide aura of protection (less wounds needed to totally cripple enemies; and helps in first rounds as well), and divine prayer makes them really self-sufficient in mid-game and helps with mana also later (dont need to buy potions). Polearms + wounding strike, and then bleeding was my favourite combo. My first playtrough consisted of Gaulen, 3 Paladins, Cleric and Divine Summoner :)

Soldier, B: Probably quite good, but didnt use much. Lower mana pool than paladins and I guess they require potions to keep mana up. Early special strikes probably help a lot, 1 pt weapon upgrades are nice (so multi weapon specialisation a possibility?). Gets also weapon mastery, like barbarian -- but that comes later and probably doesnt make much difference. So, I if you like potions, then quite good.

Thief, ?. Can't make my mind up right now. Bleeding is insane; and cheap disarm, lockpicking can provide other skill points distribution strategies, but I can't help but think that an AS, Soldier or Paladin would be better; and give other skills to Gaulen (who you are stuck with anyways). Maybe multiple thiefs with shurikens can destroy mobs you aren supposed to kill early, but then you wouldnt still manage to get full Divine Summoner gold from them.

I wrote this quickly, so maybe missed something.

And Congratulation to the devs for the really nice game. Especially the fact that you managed to package this up so nicely (good graphics, gameplay, nice story and music) with what I presume was quite a small team.

P.S. Whats up with the item evaluation skill? Only for mages trying to turn stuff to gold?

[Celerity, Executor of Impunity]

I looked at it in terms of what does this class offer that other classes do not. What do I gain by taking class x, and what do I lose. That sort of thing.

Originally posted by Heronyme:

Arcane Soldier, B: Flame strike provides lots of DoT to those not resisting fire. Also has special attacks, which for me were bread and butter (especially wounds and bleed). Frost strike can maybe be quite tactical, but didnt use it on veteran.

I haven't been very impressed with Frost Strike. It doesn't seem like it has much of a niche. Either I'm in an easy fight, in which case I want more damage or I am in a hard fight in which case a short duration single target cc is not helpful and I want either buffs or AoE cc (generally Bard).

Barbarian, C: My gut tells me that rage criticals aren't worth it and come into play later. I felt the game was mostly about control and/or DoT-s, so I liked axes/polearms + wounding strike better to soften mobs up and then kill them. However, barb, like soldier, needs 1 pt for weapon levels, and maybe specializing in dual weapons might be a real thing ... haven't tried though.

I think the breakdown is they do less damage than a Soldier with strikes for most of the game and a little more at the end but less status.

Bard, C?: Probably nice, but I didnt seem to need him. My Gaulen took merchantilism and I dont know if lategame he's spells are that necessary, though they can be nice buffs. I also wouldnt use requiem, because I wanted to get every bit of gold from enemies with Divine Summoner and therefore needed to reliably control them instead.

Requiem has a really low level modifier (meaning it is usually resisted) so I didn't mention it at all. The thing here is that while Gaulen can take Mercantalism he's already so short on skill points this forces him as a pure support character. Bards get the skill cheaper and have fewer demands on their skill points.

Divine Summoner, A: Best source for additional income (in addition to identify items and merchantilism). I haven't tested it, and tell me if I'm wrong, but if higher exp = higher score then then DS seems absolutely necessary, because more gold = more exp (sacrifice in fountains). In addition, Herald of Alnaet has nice healing, Herald of Raznet can poison quite a lot and I've heard Kersket can provide some tactical benefits.

Strictly speaking, you can get infinite gold and therefore infinite experience. It's just tedious. And isn't Alnaet the one that caps at Greater Heal?

Explorer, A: Aside from being mandatory, wounding weapons + envenom seems quite strong, and herbalism and knowledge of terrains also seem too good to pass. Also camouflage can probably avoid lots of headache on ironman. I gave Gaulen all extra skill points, so in addition to fighting, I could also use him for disarming, lock picking and merchantilism, so he kinda gave me most utility I needed.

I think I only needed camo for that one fight in the temple, honestly. I used it in a few more just because I didn't wanna deal with that.

[moneytalk18]

Originally posted by Celerity:

Strictly speaking, you can get infinite gold and therefore infinite experience. It's just tedious.

You forgot to consider, that the other way for you to grab Quality 19 and 20 items at the moment is by using Golot (even if its only by random chance). I already materialize an enemy/group and grab my Quality 19 last night. I'm sure to be able to grab Quality 20 on max Level of Golot.

[Celerity, Executor of Impunity]

That's true (aside from that one chest). However, the difference between rank 18 and 20 is not that large, and the main reason why the Divine Summoner is so low is that you really can't balance 30 level skills around 60 or 70 levels so a lot of them just get outscaling. I'm not really sure how this could be addressed, short of making them all 60 levels and making them more fully emulate classes. If they did something else I could see it, I mostly just see the summons die without doing much.

Edit: Incidently, rank 18 is item level 30, rank 20 is item level 50. That's why. All the high level chests still can't drop items that high.

[madocs]

B is for Barbarian!!

Why? I love his crits... using an axe you get extra wounds, and my goodness can he crit! He does more damage than my soldier, as he doesn't have to worry about mana. He has his place. You don't need to feed him as many skill points, which gives room to other classes for skill points. He doesn't have any active attacks, which does make him boring, but there are others in the group for that. Rage crits really do make him quite strong! Not an "A" like you have rated the soldier, but definitely not a "C" either!

[Celerity, Executor of Impunity]

Barbarian got a low score mostly because of direct damage being bad and him generally being a Soldier but worse. Sure it's nice he crits for 250, then DoTs tick for 500-1,000 and the boss has 5,000-10,000 or more life.

[iAndy]

I would put mage lower, like D- or F.. it's really not even that good in early game, unless you have trouble with wasps early on, but you can just avoid them until you can beat them. I've made a few groups now (all veteran) and my group with the mage, she basically just defends most fights. Sometimes I use the hammer or meteor spell for wounds on big guys but a better class could have replaced that (granted the spells can't miss, but it doesn't make up for the uselessness the rest of the time.)

My favorite group so far is Explorer (axe), Thief (sword), Soldier (mace), Arcane Soldier (xbow), Bard (xbow), Cleric (shield).

[Celerity, Executor of Impunity]

Anything below C is non viable in some way, not merely outclassed. Mages can work, they're just really outclassed despite having a few key uses.

It illustrates the game is reasonably well balanced, not one of those games where half the classes are A tier and half are F or lower.

[Maple]

Interesting how different this is from how people's thoughts on the classes were at launch- iirc, Arcane Soldier wasn't considered to be very good, and Mages and Paladins were considered to be pretty great (I remember one suggested easymode team was 3 paladins and 2 mages).

If you did try to avoid using a Mage, how viable would it be to use an Arcane Soldier and sink a couple points into some AoE attack for dealing with wasps? I know in the long run it's a waste of skill points, but seems like a lesser waste than using a whole character slot that will fall off. And the wasps don't need that high of a power level to kill.

I'm just asking because I remember wasps were a BIG problem for me, and I was strugging due to how common they were- I couldn't just wait until I outleveled them because I was missing so much exp not killing them.

[Celerity, Executor of Impunity]

Arcane Soldier is very counterintuitive. If you do the logical thing and make him a fighter mage you have a less than useless character. If you do the other logical thing and raise his elemental strike levels he is also a useless character. If Flaming Strike didn't scale with Attack/Agility this class would be F-, no contest.

I have no idea what people were saying early on. However I don't use a mage on either of my recent Hardcore Ironman runs, don't take an AoE damage skill either (not that you get any at the time where Wasp encounters are really relevant). I deal with them by lucky hits, timed stunning songs and the odd low level attack item.

[Maple]

Allright, thanks. When I ran a calculator on Arcane Soldier it seemed he had enough extra skill points floating to sacrifice a few into an AoE skill. You're probably right about not having AoE skills when wasps are a problem, though.

Got one more question regarding party composition: When it comes to weapons, do you prefer to stack the same weapon status type (wounds/bleed/stun), or go with a mix? If you stack one type of status, which one? I ask because I'm wondering if one of the reasons I had such a hard time back in the day was because I was using a weapon of each type and spreading my status effects too thin.

[Celerity, Executor of Impunity]

I usually use a weapon of each type because of immunities. Stacking kind of seems like a good idea but either it works and makes the game one dimensional or doesn't and makes it grindy.

And the earliest AoE relevant against Wasps is Blizzard, but Arcane Soldier progression is so delayed that won't kill Wasps well. Fireball isn't available when they are at all.

[Zodd the Immortal]

Mage is A+ for me, best character in early, best character in mid, strong character in late except a few battles vs last demons.

The only negative thing about mage is some spells have so high cost.

Also run a game with 2 or 3 mages make the game a easy walk.


Divine summoner is A, just summon raznet and you get a killer machine, also best character for rush Arena.

[iAndy]

Zodd, what skill did you play with the 2-3 mage group? I'd be curious to see how that would work past lvl 30-35 on veteran/hc. I can see them maybe being viable if you bring a ton of mana potions along, but then they're a pretty big money sink.

As for beating wasps without a mage, if I have to fight them, I just use spark scrolls (or blizzard/arrow for the higher ones), or just severely outlevel them. I think it's better than wasting points on skills you'll only use for a few mobs.

[Zodd the Immortal]

Spark and Stone arrow is like a lvl 30 melee atack damage and never fail.
Blizzard does 250+ damage to large groups just for 30 mp, spam it.
Stone hammer for a cheap source of wounds.
Icy shards for bleed.
Fireball for small groups.
Lightning for single target if you don't need any effect.
Lightning storm for fire ressistant foes.
Energy absortion to prevent use potions in long battles.

Rest after every 1-2 battles and you will don't need use potions.

Mage become weak after lvl 45-50, but at this point the game is almost finished.