Ideas on classes

[Solarclipse]

Just beat it on expert, actually at a lower level than I did my first time around on hard. This game is a lot more open than many rpgs as far being able to explore the world a lot more, less on rail with quest after quest. With the classes and difficulty levels, it makes for a fairly satisfying playthrough. No new game plus, but hey.

Some tips on classes:

Lita
-Valkeryie is pretty awesome, the elven focus power upgrade when you are hit is very powerful for boss fights. She can heal the party with her charged arrow, or give magic with the multi shot. The re-raise everyone on the sun fury is kind of nice for boss fights on hard difficulties. I'd recommend the higher damage multi shot, it uses less magic so you don't need MP as much, then save the healing charged shot for when your party needs it...unless you have a paladin with a life mark, then you probably won't need it.
-Ranger has a really strong charged shot, but multi is pretty meh. Make sure you have an MP leech so you can always use it.

Adrian
-The berseker does a lot of damage, but ends up being a lot of support in boss fights because of taunt-mark-reflect.
-The paladin's mark only gives 15% damage boost, vs 20%, but with the life steal you don't have to heal very often so it ends up giving you more attacks anyway. If you use a lot of magic, I'd recommend putting a mp leech on the whirlwind, even if it hits only one enemy it will give everyone enough magic to do what they need.

Doren
-The occultist never does much damage with the healing, so a lot of his skill upgrades are lame. You don't need much magic, but this isn't a problem with the cleric either because his basic attack is an mp leach, and you get double mp.
-The cleric's regen with MP might be more useful, if you don't have other MP leech skills, since Adrian or Lita can run out of magic sometimes. Double the regen is more practical though, especially if you get it early on. Alter time: go for dodge bonus over speed, as you should be getting enough agility form levels to mostly go first in battles anyway (for the crit and dodge bonuses) His holy blast gets really powerful, I'd recommend the extra potency upgrade, using Seri's magic/Adrian's whirlwind/Lita's multishot to do crowd control.

Seri
-The elementalist can channel your ultimate bar really fast, which is pretty useful. If you go this route, it might be better to have a berserker to follow up with whirlwind or power strikes when she does lightning.
-The battlemage can really do some damage, and doesn't need much magic. Really ice and lightning are all you need. It's great to target a group with lightening knowing that whenever you get around to Seri hitting them, she will do double damage. Pair that with taunt/mark/occultist's alter time, and its pretty awesome.

Lita is really the best damage dealer all around no matter what though. Aim for 66.6% or 75% crits by time you have tier 4 gear :)

So with all said and done, I'd recommend Valkyrie and Cleric—the other two you could go either way and make synergies. But those two classes seem a notch above their counterparts.

One last tip: in the area with the wasps there is a cave with a relic which will occasionally net you 3 resources instead of the usual max of two. You can avoid/run away from all the wasps and get that early on—it will give you a little leg up on crafting.

[Solarclipse]

For the devs, design thoughts for future games: Being able to change classes could be a bit much, but having a preview of each one before deciding would be fair.

it would be nice to change the upgraded /exotic skills because some of them aren't that useful, but you can't always tell from the descriptions how useful something actually is. Some of the skills aren't worth it. It would be fair to be able to purchase the other skill, even if it cost double the stones to do so. It would still put a limit on it, but it would be more fair and enjoyable for players to be able to tweak things. Or at least, be more specific in every description. Like elven focus just says. How much mp or hp does it restore to allies, for example? Forcing players to make decisions decisions on a guess is not good for playability, let alone replayability. I didn't purchase a lot of skills because I just couldn't figure out how useful they would be or scale as my characters levelled. I played it twice, curious about the classes, but also interested in the higher difficulty and taking the open-ish world to my advantage. That said, I really liked this game, thank you!

[PixyFreakingStix]

Great thoughts Solar, thanks for sharing! Our next game isn't going to have class changing, but we'll keep this in mind for anything we do in the future.

[Fuyukai Desu!]

I believe every build is viable, it just a matter of taste.