Some class/skill reviews

[Ikarius]

Mercenary - A solid starter class. Late-game, you can combine Sturdy Grip with dual wield and equip two Maul's for over-the-top damage on a normal "attack" action. Health Expert is a decent passive to equip until you get some other form of self-healing (life font, leech life, auto-regen, etc).

Knight - Okay-ish as a class, but has some real gems for skills; life font is great for melee builds, and One for All is a crown-jewel skill when attached to a dual-wield character with guns.

Templar - Emboldening chant is a terrific skill with no MP cost. You can slap this skillset on a melee build and pop chant at the start of each combat.

Duelist - There are 3 classes I see as optimal for dual-wield melee. Mercenary (mauls), Reaver (axes), and Duelist w/ rapier/dagger. Duelist is the weakest for pure damage, except against very-high defense enemies with lower res/elemental weaknesses... but it comes with built-in health leech from basic attacks, a ranged attack (falcon flourish), and zero-MP attacks with elemental damage. In the end, I think Duelist comes out as the strongest.

Reaver - Surprisingly, this class doesn't feel as strong as it initially looks. Doublehand is pretty disappointing, granting a 20% bonus to the attack bonus from a 1-handed weapon. Even upping that to 50% would not begin to compete with dual-wield. Whirling blow is situational, and Desperate blow is a useful 2.8x dmg for a while.

Assassin - Dual. Wield. This class is almost exclusively useful for the passive ability you can unlock at the end of it's tree. The counter ability is a critical-only, etc, and the AoE's are hard to get effective use from.

Ranger - Extremely useful early on. Decently powerful ranged attacks combined with decent-ish utility, a couple of AoE attacks, and sniper shot. Late game, it's not terribly useful outside of a specialized build with a character you get later on.

Scoundrel - The steal counter remains useful throughout the game, and Exploit Weakness can be useful combined with ranger's Know Weakness passive. Sneak attack can be decent early on.

Gunner - Can equip Guns, which are awesome due to their range. The various status-abilities are decentish, and Height advantage can become ridiculous once you gain certain movement abilities. Focus is actually extremely disappointing. It looks like it could be useful against high-defense targets, but it appears defense applies a straight % damage reduction, rather than capping at any point, and it's bonus only applies to the first portion of any attack- such as a warmage infused blade or dual-wield attack. Due to the range of guns, it's extremely rare that you cannot attack a target every round, making focus... extremely niche. Frankly, I think focus would work better on ranger than gunner.

Peddler - has strong use early-game. For defensive play, traps can be pretty amazing, and early-on, Item Potency is exceedingly useful; a double-damage rock bypasses most (all?) miss chance, and does extremely potent damage. Double-effect potions are also very potent early on. It feels like you need to spend too much time in the class to unlock "patented usage", which is more situational than item potency.

Mender - Early game, the best healer, and essential. I'm really not so sure about the design decision to inflict wounds every time a unit falls in combat, rather than inflicting a wound if a unit is dead when combat ends, but that's the road the devs chose. Late game, only useful if you need a second healer.

Alchemystic - Haste. And mass Haste. And Mystic Shield counter. And Refresh (buffs). While I'm here, I'll note that I really don't understand the restriction of casting a buff on someone while they already have it. It makes no sense to me that you can't re-start the buff duration by casting (for example) haste on a unit a second time, and MUST use refresh if you want to extend the duration. But, I pretty much always carry the Alchemystic skillset on a character.

Plague Doctor - I don't think I've ever used this class except in order to level it to meet other class requirements. The barrier counter is the single most useful aspect of this class.

Wizard - Smart Casting is awesome, and Boon is a solid choice until you unlock other more potent options. Otherwise, the class eventually becomes outshone by most other classes, despite being definitely useful early game.

Fellblade - Malice is exceedingly useful as a passive. Versatile has it's uses, and Evade Magic can be situationally useful.

Warmage - One of my favourite skillsets to equip. Adding elemental damage to physical attacks helps deal with high-defense enemies.

Gambler - I thought I'd hate this class. I was very very wrong. I nearly-always deploy a gambler/warmage wielding a spear. The random buffs/debuffs for zero MP is awesome. Allure, either directly or through infused blade is amazing. Add the Malice passive to ensure it lands, and this class generates extremely high action efficiency.

Gadgeteer - I had issues with building most gadgets due to concerns about eating materials needed to improve consumables/build gear/badges. Absorb Mana is OK, and Mana Expert is surprisingly useful to get a leg up on casting powerful spells/skills. Shortest skilltree.

Sorcerer - seems to have a clock on usefulness. Using mana font and enough shoes can allow casting a lay waste spell every turn, but the low-ish damage to all enemies becomes less useful as you unlock combinations capable of taking out an enemy in a round or two. Economy is a decent passive, and Eruptor is okay-ish too.

Druid - good solid skillset for a long while. Double-cast is pretty much a requirement to attach to one or more casters, and Counter: Magic is a decent choice.

As far as healers go, Yates gets the job done once you unlock dual-cast on him. Coupled with his zombie summoning, I rarely deploy a second healer.

I'm not really going into most of the story classes, or any of the badge classes- most of the use of those should be relatively self-evident once you unlock them. I may update this with some links to some other in-depth analysis threads later.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

What settings are/were you playing on? (Also - which unique heroes did you utilize vs. how many generic ones?) Your estimation on a lot of classes is quite different from my own so I'm curious. Since Fell Seal has a lot of difficulty setting options on top of the unique units that can noticeably influence how viable certain things are, it's useful to know what kind of play these thoughts come from.

[Ikarius]

I'm playing on standard difficulty. As far as named, I am using Kyria, who's kind of unavoidable for most missions. Initially I built her as a dual-wield melee. I was using Reiner as gambler/warmage for much of the game as well. As I mentioned, I'm using Yates as my primary healer. After I received Katja and Kairu - I went back and built Kairu as a dual-wield melee, shifted Kyria to gambler/warmage, and dropped my use of Reiner. I haven't quite figured out what to do with his special class yet. Katja was fairly straightforward to build using one of her passives and hunter, but she's still an optional; depends on the fight whether I bring her in or not. In short, I mostly used Counter:Slow from Kyria, nothing unique from Reiner, and I've used the hell out of Anatomy on Yates; double-cast healing @ +50% + zombies when I've got opportunity is just stupendous in terms of action efficiency.

I really really haven't found much use for Anadine, though she'd have been helpful on the umm, wyrm fight if I'd known ahead of time. Bzaro is probably extremely powerful if built right, but I havent yet taken the time to sort him out besides picking up some movement classes for chests.

I'm similarly curious about how you feel things change for higher difficulties. Which bits do you think shine in higher difficulties that I relegated as "meh" ?

[RavenOfRazgriz]

Part of what gets more useful as you get to higher levels are status effects - Druid, Gambler, Plague Doctor, Gunner, and Fellblade all become very useful classes because they can solve tempo issues and deal with stronger foes easily. Effects like Economy become very useful because higher defenses make it harder for effects like Dual Wield to push through overpowering damage, meaning burst effects like Righteous Blade / Assassinate / Sniper Shot become powerful DPS options. Classes like Mender become important to have as redundancy because problems often need to be solved by whoever has AT rather than one specialized unit - same with effects like Health Expert, when units do a lot more damage, that Passive in particular becomes pretty much the best in the game.

The bit about Righteous Blade, etc. being more important also makes classes like Wizard outshine combo-casters like Warmage (at least in some respects) because it can deal MP-efficient high-damage options, which are good for overcoming a unit's higher defenses.

Playing on Standard makes it understandable why classes like Druid or Plague Doctor didn't feel as potent - many of their tools (Poison, Weaken, etc.) aren't as useful when you can reliably win a DPS race against your enemies. Although, if you like Gambler + Warmage, you should look at Druid + Gambler, just as a suggestion. :)

[Conan The Librarian]

Ikarius-

Lots of interesting info there. I'll put down some of my thoughts regarding them:

Mercenary--To add to your thoughts, I love how a lot of their skills are range = weapon. This can allow a ranged hero who has already learned these to have great utility, not only with the couple of debuffs, but also with their [Stunning Blow]. I also appreciate their shoving move, as that can have a lot of potential (auto-kill situations esp) depending on the terrain / positioning situation.

Knight--To add to your thoughts, I'd say that [No Flank] can be a good defensive passive, and [Heavy Hit] is a great damage move against high defense targets. Sometimes being able to take out a third of the enemy's health in one hit can prove to be more effective than other conventional attacks. Pair this with the fact that it's Range = Weapon, it's a tool you can use alongside [One For All] with your ranged units who use Knight as a seconday class. [Taunt] is also very strong as it's a 100% chance berzerk move. Yes, it only has a range of 2, but it can really debilitate enemies who rely on skills or spells since they'll only do regular attacks.

Templar--While [Emboldening Chant] is indeed an amazing move (I use it often when I have a Templar) they have a few more tools than just that. [Righteous Blade], for example, it's not only a heavy hitter (with a damage ratio of 2.8), but also has that rare holy element, which is great for bypassing most resistances or even exploiting the weakness of certain monsters. [Cleansing Blade] is a great buff dispeller, [Siphon] is great for building up mana for a [Righteous Blade] strike, and [Soothing Chant] can give you some much-needed healing if you're lacking it. Basically, I'd say they have much more than just one attack buff move to prove their usefulness.

Duelist--You're quite right that their [Leech Life] passive can be great with dual wielding, but I would say their strength lies more in their flourishes, which don't utilize two weapons (remember that dual wielding doesn't increase damage on skills).

Reaver--It's true that [Doublehand] isn't as effective as [Dual Wield], but there are still a couple of mitigating factors:

A. While it takes up both of your hands, your weapon only takes up one slot instead of two. This therefore leaves you with one more equipment slot open comparatively. Given that some of the accessories are quite strong (especially the various kinds of later game gloves) there is a tradeoff between a second weapon and an accessory.

B. Since it's only one weapon, you'll therefore not have any "disadvantage" in terms of using skills (since dual wield doesn't help skills).

C. In terms of "how easy it is to get", it's much easier to obtain [Doublehand] instead of [Dual Wield] as (in comparison to each other) for job requirements, Reaver only requires Templar 5, while the same unit getting to an Assassin requires 4 Ranger and 4 Gunner instead. Not only that, but [Dual Wield] is at the end of the Assassin skill tree while [Doublehand] is only a tier 2 ability, which can be the first thing you learn with Reaver AP.

Again, I readily acknowledge that [Dual Wield] is stronger than [Doublehand], I'm just pointing out that there are a couple of mitigating factors for this.

As for the Reaver's skillset, I'd say that it's quite good, and there are reasons why many players have said how they think they're a very strong class. Those couple of moves which are ranged attacks (single target and AoE) are great for a melee hero, as even a range of 3 can make a big difference compared to 1. They have further good AoE capability with their [Whirling Blow] which hits everyone around them for a quite-high damage ratio of 0.95--that is ALMOST like getting two (or three or four if you're fortunate) full hits on the enemy with one move at zero mana cost. Lastly, their [Bloodlust] passive can be really nasty if you're able to make sure they have a large health pool and/or good defensive setup, to be able to operate at lower % health to benefit from this passive.

Assassin--Yes, [Dual Wield] is perhaps the main impetus for learning this class, however, I'd say their toolkit is not to be ignored. The fact that they can blind, dispell, and sleep targets makes them great for crowd control / situation control. Also, [Assassinate] is a strong move (2.8x damage ratio) with chances for Bleed / Poison / Blind (50% chance for each ain't too bad in my book).

Ranger--I agree with your general estimation, but disagree that they somehow fall off in terms of usefullness in later parts of the game. Rooting enemies is useful, detecting traps has a certain level of utility, their AoE moves work just fine later on, it's not like the damage decreases or something, and yes, as you mentioned, [Sniper Shot] is strong.

Scoundrel--Ha, yes, [Counter: Steal] is great for low-effort component gathering. To add to your list, I'd also say that their debuff utility with [Dirty Hit] and (the newly-patched) [Arterial Cut] is great. Not only can these be used by distance (range = weapon), but they also count as "Regular Attacks", meaning they can apply on-hit effects from your weapon(s). I certainly picture a dual-wielding daggers with debuffs Scoundrel using these moves to easily debilitate enemies with not only 2 potential debuffs from the two daggers, but another debuff chance of blind or bleed.

Gunner--I'd say that the debuffs it has available are a bit more useful than you're giving credit. Like the Ranger, with those "range = weapon" abilities, these allow you to put on some import debuffs (Berzerk / Mute / Slow) from far away, which is pretty huge utility. This could allow you to marginalize mages and warriors alike. [Focus] is actually such a strong ability that it was nerfed at a certain point. It's true that with the kinds of strategies you discussed it won't work as well, but using a good [Focus] before a strong ability like [Sniper Shot] / [Righteous Blade] / [Assassinate] can allow for a one-hit KO. It also works well with AoE moves or even nastier to [Focus] right before using a Sorcerer hit-all spell (obviously it would be not as typical for a Sorerer to have [Focus], but I speak theoretically)

Peddler--I'd like to add that [Patented Useage] is very strong, obviously in conjuction with [Item Potency]. Being able to use a double-strength potion to heal in a cross??? Being able to throw a double-strength rock in a cross shape which has perfect accuracy??? A well-placed AoE Remedy??? These are all really good things that can turn the tide of a battle. Also, [Sales Pitch] being an AoE haste for "only" 12 mana is great.

Mender--I mean, I really don't see where this class "falls off" later game, given its nice AoE heal, [Revive II], [Heal II], and [Panacea II]. I know you stated that Yates takes care of most of your healing needs, but, perhaps your experience has been different from mine. Things can get pretty sticky at certain parts of the game, and only having "one healer" is kind of a small margin I would never want to deal with. If my "one healer" get crowd-controlled in some fashion, I really want to have another one ready to go at a moment's notice. Yes, I know that consumables can help cover those times, but I personally would rather have a bit more healing coverage.

Alchemystic--The only comment I'll add here is about the buff / debuff refreshing on recast. Personally I actually agree with the general concept that it seems "more intuitive" that refreshing on recast should work, however, 6 Eyes has specifically decided against this to prevent too many instances of debuff-loops (as in, keeping something in such a state on a permanent basis during the battle till they die). By having things as they are, it will give units a small window to take their turn right after a debuff falls off, thereby giving them "more of a chance" if you know what I mean. That being said, there is a text edit to adjust this rule should you prefer to change it for yourself. Feel free to ask me for details.

Plague Doctor--In past versions from months ago, I might've agreed with you, however, after their re-work early in the Steam EA period, they finally found themselves a place as an interesting hybrid character. [Recovery] is a great AoE heal and cleansing move which can't be overlooked. Poison / Healing Bursts give this character strong AoE damage / healing potential, especially when paried with [Smart Casting] to account for being in the middle of the action. Lastly, a well-placed [Mass Slow] can improve a battle's situation.

Wizard--Agree for the most part, except that A. [Boon] can be used in some nasty combos (such as with [Versatility] to make a semi-mana machine with high damage potential). B. In terms of pure damage, Wizard does a great job; I'm not sure why you'd say they get outshone by other casters. Those elemental Locus spells do a LOT of damge (2x damage ratio) and work in tandem with [Boon] to help secure those kills. When paired with "some other caster class" for more utility (Plague Doctor / Alchemystic / Mender etc), you have yourself an effective mage unit.

Fellblade--I would add that their skillset has some good combos it can pull off, specifically since their various Slice moves also count as regular attacks. This allows you to given them some lovely debuff daggers to make it so their applying not only the dagger(s)' debuff(s), but also the abilities' debuffs. Having Sleep / Poison / Weaken available (alongside the recently-buffed [Chaos Slice] allows this class to really control the battlefield. Add in the naty debuff-spreading move of [Miasma] (especially when combined with other units of yours who can dish out debuffs) and you can significantly hinder the enemy.

Warmage--Agreed, one of my favorites as well (Arcane Archer ahoy!)

Gambler--It's nice to hear someone else who really likes this class as I hear a lot of mixed feelings about it from players. The only thing I'd add is that [Lucky] is a really great passive with lots of function to it, (almost) regardless of what your hero's main focus is.

Gadgeteer--The only thing I'd add is that [Absorb Mana] is actually considered to be a very strong passive as it can easily fuel up strong / expensive moves (such as [Sniper Shot] / [Righteous Blade] / [Assassinate] / Locus Spells etc). Granted, the recent "fix" to it was to prevent certain levels of "cheese" with it, but even still, it's worth considering.

Sorcerer--I mean, it's true that it's easy to come up with times when it doesn't seem "as effective", but when you really sit down and consider the numbers, it starts making sense. Assume (for sake of illustration) that you do 40 damage to 6 enemy units. That's 240 damage with ONE MOVE. 40 is even a pretty low number (depending on various factors like how far you are in the game, etc) so really, the strength goes up from here. "Ok, but that's at the beginning of a battle, what about as the enemies start dying?" That's a valid concern, as it decreases the total amount of damage done; however, then their moves can be good for finishing off multiple enemies in one attack in situations where say, a cross spell, wouldn't hit.

Druid--Mhmmmm, one of my favorite classes to use on my casters. The fact that they do "a little bit of everything" makes their magic an amazing secondary skillset to put on your casters so they always have "something good" to do in almost any situation, regardless of what their main class is.

To put the parameters of most of experience, I tend to play on Veteran to get a good feel for what the "normal difficulty" gameplay is like.

Side note on Anadine--Idk, I think her class has not only really high damage potential, but her [Counter: Mute] and [Cleave] abilities are pretty dang good, especially [Cleave] Add in the fact that [Counter: Mute] was recently buffed along with a couple of her high damage yet self-harming moves , and I'd say that's even more reason to utilize her and her unique skills.

Anyway, I'd like to leave the usual caveat that these are my opinions, perspectives can differ, and many things are tempered by peoples' personal playstyles. I read a bit about some things that you prefer to do, and I know there are some abilities / combos that I tend to gravitate toward / tend to not utilize as much.

[arnaud_defrance]

I have my own opinions after playing through the full game on veteran (above standard where enemies like to revive and heal.) One thing that had a surprisingly large impact was the lack of hotkeys for abilities or menu to use favorites/frequently-used abilities : double casters and units with abilities are nice, but I did notice a tendency to go for dual-wield and OneForAll for little other reason than it meant less going through menus. An UI improvement there is a must.
*
Mercenary - A decent early class with two huge problems. The first is the abysmal speed growth stat of the class, encouraging leaving quickly. The second is that stats debuffs overall are pretty underwhelming: ATK&MND down in particular have low impact of damage taken, when so many others debuffs (like taunts) give much more problems to the enemy. Even for gunner, I’d rather use knight for Heavy Hit.

Knight - The star of the game. An early-game class with great stats growth (except speed) that let you survive everything. The passive are really, really good especially with self-damaging abilities, life font plus shoes is like the mana font of casters: enabling great survival and harm alike. Defend’s usefulness fall quickly due to not applying against multiple attacks and rocks, Taunt is a godsend that make counter-attacking build very useful, Heavy Hit let you harm boss and otherwise high DEF enemies with stupendous results. Protect can be useful if used before moving, against mass-range party, but of course One for All is the king ability: synergyzing with dual-wield, double-caster and making low-speed a non-issue. Access to spear nails Knight as best overall since it allows attack at range of two, bypassing counterattacks from troublesome enemies (and many vertical range issues.)

Templar - Less impressive than knight it immediatedly follow. It has some decent abilities but lack to the focus needed to stand in higher difficulties. This change in the late game as demons show up, as beside a high-holy damage ultimate they can wield Holy Mace which turn any dual wielder into a 200-400 damage-hitter against demons. I’d say their problem stem from multiple abilities dependency.

Duelist - Haven’t bothered to unlock the class, surprisingly, and won the game without them. From what I heard they are one of the best class, a superior fellblade.

Reaver - A gimmick class that compete for attention with Anadine, it’s hard to justify getting both a Reaver and Anadine in a team of six. I believe doublehand is subpar compared to others passives (mostly defensives ones or mana font) and it lacks statut effect to mess with the enemies on higher difficulties. It doesn’t help their requierement is pretty high. Biggest trouble for me is that casters have more utility and Reavers have big trouble versus high DEF.

Assassin - While Dual Wield is great, I actually like the class best for its stat growth: 1.5 in the king stat of speed allow for some very quick leveling and action. The Lethality tree is also high up there: mirage can force the enemy to expand attacks for nothing, the blind bomb is handy against sleep-immune, units weak to sleep make their bomb very useful even for a low-level assassin, and Assassinate is one of the best ultimate in the game due to its triple effect statut and range. Late game their dual-wielding can also find profit with gambler/gadgetter skills with two flash knives for a 2*33 speed bonus, going over 200 speed and making them the most dangerous target on the field.

Ranger - A class with trick and a good speed stat growth to take a few level in. It does fall short compared to caster, with root failing to take making it much less attractive than double-caster. The range falls short comapared to gunner, with no way against high-defense enemies. The class fears the commonly present thorn, requiere more MP for its ultimate that is pretty underwhelming without statut effect or holy element. ATK is too low to make the multiplier meaningful. Scout is occasionally useful but not enough.

Scoundrel - Formerly not interesting enough, the recent buffs have made them much stronger. Dirty hit causes a very useful debuffs, available from the get go, although I didn’t steal much in my run: hunting down the bonus kawa proved much more fruitful. The class does lose in efficiency as Sneak attack fall behind others skills. Still nice class to have and nicer now.

Gunner - Highest range unit that’s deadly with Knight’s All for One or to help a Knight All-for-Owning trigger. Dual wield allow range at the cost of debuffs, which work well if you’re keeping PM for a secondary class (like mender). The debuffs are good… when they land. Gunner/Knight shines best overall, since Heavy Hit makes the otherwise middling damage of the gunner a non-issue against tough enemies. Great class. I do wish their weapons like others (axes) had more exotic effects.

Peddler - I don’t remember using it, but I did long ago in an earlier version and playthrough of the game. Rocks being terrifying make this class surprisingly good, especially if you use steal items to refill stocks and deplete the AI (especially on higher difficulties). Having been on the wrong end of the class show me they’re terrifying, although you can’t stack them and it might discourage you from using items with others units.

Mender - The healing class by excellence. Mass heal, Panacea and Revive II are its bread and butter. Available from the get go, it also has the best passive in the game: Mana Font, which combine very well with multiple pairs of shoes and nearly any class listed. It’s where a high-speed stat shine since it allows to stack up caster PM very quickly. Heal II also shines, and it’s definitively a class that you take all the way to the final battle, Revive II being a savior like no other and Rebirth helping cause quite a few problems with enemies. Combine with Fortitude on a designed punchbag and the AI will suffer just as much as it sometimes makes me.

Alchemystic - Buffs and debuffs caster. I found haste and mass haste nice but not great, it takes an action and a lot of PM to cast, while being easily countered by slow and not helping much if you’ve already got high-speed characters. In contrast double-cast thorns is great, ruining the day of all enemies with AOE and making keeping healers around very worthwhile. Mass renew work well with it, and overall I like keeping the class around as a primary or secondary.

Plague Doctor - A surprisingly useful class. It has barrier which is the strongest buffs in the game, keeping enemies busy in the early turns rather than ruining your day. It has poison which is terrifying with double-cast and Knight’s One for All. The burst skill is less useful without smart casting, recovery helps with some but not all statut effect. One overlooked part is that it has 1 speed stat growth making it a good caster class to level in.

Wizard - Elemental killing machine who help do a lot of damage in the early game. I tend not to use the adaptative affinity or boon that much, rather I focused on speeding them up with shoes and mana and combined their doublecasting prowness with a complimentary class to ruin the AI day. Paired with Gadgetter can make them horribly overpower as Double-cast Focus spells with a well placed All-For-One will cause untold amount of slaughter. Also fun. Druid Panacea and Poison work well in combination, to have a low single-target spell for AfO and giving you Heal I plus Panacea I.

FellBlade - Another class suffering from multiple stats dependency. It has some quirky abilities but when you can acquire it, you tend to lack elemental and effect-based weaponry to make the best of it. Its main weaknesses are lack of survvability and range, which make many others class superior to the fellblade. Great speed stat growth though.

Warmage - haven’t unlocked it, amusingly enough. I did face some Pulsar-using boss who showed me how that single ability will wreck enemies teams. How poetic Anadine got one-shot multiple times by that backstory-relevant character.

Gambler - Very, very good. I only started using it late and… not regretted it because I’ll likely use it in an harder playthrough. The cards debuffs feel better than they used to, and have the immense advantage of needing no MP allowing for shenanigan with Allure and a backup MP-expensive class. Also has good speed and can carry knives, like flash knives to make an insanely fast dealers of buffs and charm alike.

Gadgeteer - A very strong class for the midgame, as before then you won’t have many of the gadgets. Demoralizer (DEF/MND-) is very handy, the +20 mana on target even more so (doublecast buffs ahoy!), it always has a tool for the situation. More than that, you can give the class to anybody without even getting the passive, and they’ll be able to help, as the class is more depending on acquiring gadget than getting the class passives. They make me wish we had hotkeys or a UI for frequently used abilities though.

Sorcerer - Another gimmy class for the mid-game that is much better on paper than in reality. It all comes down both to killing units being better than damaging them all, and the numerous counter that units will have. High Magic but terrible Speed growth, expensive abilities, and a passive that might be more useful if it didn’t have more competition. Overall it feels like there are always better choice when you come down to it, especially as the game progress and AOE damage fall over a focus on single-target and debuffs.

Druid - The best caster class for its versatility and passive. Double cast is the most useful caster ability, less for the damage and more for the utility. It also let caster exp twice times faster, and Druid provide all the spell you need for any situation: Healing, Curing, Single-target poisoning, some elemental just in case. Also gives Counter:Magic which is extremely good to bother your party cross-shaped-for-buffing. A must to train in.

I could do the secret class too, but that's enough of a wall of text.

[Conan The Librarian]

Arnaud_Defrance-

Just a small FYI that doublecasting does NOT increase your exp gains anymore, that was nerfed awhile ago to 50% exp gained per spell awhile ago.

Also hotkeys for spells etc don’t exist because the game is made for controllers as well, which don’t havd enough buttons to allow this, but given the number of buttons in the menus and variables in skills learn etc, it wouldn’t work well.

Thread regarding this:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/699170/discussions/0/1743353798892666177/

[Ikarius]

Some comments on others' thoughts.

I.... am not a fan of the "chance" debuff skills which do less damage (AND usually cost mana)- particularly the 50% and 65% skills. Yes, you can push them to 60/75% chance with malice. However, you're typically doing at minimum 15% less damage (.85 dmg vs 1 or more), you're spending MP which could frequently be used to get a 2.8 skill off sooner, and... the debuff can fail to land. If the debuff fails to land, you've just generated negative action economy. And many of those debuffs are... minor action economy.

I like haste- which is a buff and never "fails" to land. I like allure which has a 90% success rate for a gambler w/ malice, and I like debuffs which can be applied w/ weapons (a dual-wield duelist with the right dagger can apply debuffs very effectively while not substantially reducing damage below 2x- only a hit to the atk bonux from the dagger). Counter-based debuffs can be decent as well, and traps are also excellent when you can get them in the right places.

In terms of shifting action economy, I rank the debuffs like this: Charm > Sleep > silence > bleed/poison/slow, and blind ranges in economy from as effective as sleep to lower than bleed/poison/slow depending on the enemy and RNG.

Anatomy Zombies are another means of generating substantial amounts of action economy with essentially no chance of failure.

Gambler's random buffs/debuffs almost (5%?) never fail to land, are castable at range, and cost no MP.

Pretty much everything else is simply detracting from my ability to heal or deal damage.

Killing an enemy is a big shift in action economy.


I hope that clarifies my analysis of debuffs and their usefulness.

[Corence]

Berserk is also a great debuff. Taunt from Knight can frequently set enemies up to attack each other which is better than a hard disable, especially if it triggers counters. Even if they attack your own characters, it's still a good disable against mages and can still trigger your own counters.

I feel like Taunt could be moved to Range 1 -- it seems thematically weird for Knights to be yelling at people from a range and getting them to fight each other (such "Chivalry"), and at least this way the Knight is a possible target. But it's fun to use so I'd also be sad to see the current version disappear.

[Ikarius]

@Corence - oh, you're absolutely right. I forgot about berserk when I was listing debuffs. Yep, that one can definitely be powerful, but whenever I tried it, I had terrible luck with it landing.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

Originally posted by Ikarius:

Pretty much everything else is simply detracting from my ability to heal or deal damage.

Killing an enemy is a big shift in action economy.

These thoughts make perfect sense on Standard. When units are easy to kill, there's no reason to hit them with status effects outside of the ones like Sleep or Charm that directly "turn off" their turns or make them more vulnerable.

As the difficulty settings are cranked higher and higher, killing an enemy - due to increased Item presence, higher gear ratios, and higher raw stats - stops being something that can be done by just walking up to the enemy, whereas enemy units' ATK and MND values make their ability to just walk up and ground your own units (if they lack proper defenses) a pretty easy task.

This is why status gets more valuable the higher the settings are toned up. Poison or Bleed, for example, both bypasses the inflated DEF/RES values via its DOT effect and still demands two turns of economy to fully reverse. Combine with Doublecast and the enemy's Action Economy can be quickly overwhelmed, both via spam, and via the other options that open that come from combining Druid with skillsets like Sorcerer and Gambler. Fellblade can abuse its formula to push through passable damage in spite of the settings while also applying Sleep, Poison, etc. Berserk (particularly from a Gunner) and Weaken become important to ensuring the opposing team has no comeback mechanics, etc., as once settings get high enough, even Heal I can often be a full-heal on enemy units. Stats+50% is pretty much like every enemy Mender having Legendary Healer innate for free, to give perspective as to how powerful enemy units can get if you really want a challenge from them.

While you've taken my explanation of Action Economy to heart, one thing I left out for simplicity is the concept of value - the actions of two units don't always have the same value. In Fell Seal, this is important to remember on very high settings, because it reaches a point where nearly all enemy turns are more valuable than your own turns - as they can kill you easily but you can't return the favor. This is where simply burying them with your own momentum and tying up their Action Economy in all kinds of secondary effects is the safest and most consistent way to win.

It comes back to the idea I was talking about in that thread originally, actually. The most straightforward way to think about it, is - damage is good, until the enemy can cast a Heal spell and undo two or more actions in a single AT. On Standard, you can usually commit a kill before this happens, and can run aggressively-oriented units with Collect [X] Abilities, Blood Trophy, Yates or Lich with Reanimate, etc., that ensure those units don't get back up. As settings are cranked up, it becomes easier and easier for the opposing party to cast that Heal spell and undo all your committed damage. And as the settings go up, because the opposing party's ATs are becoming more and more valuable, the rate at which they can punish you for rushing damage after negating it with a Heal spell also increases.

[Ikarius]

@RavenofRagriz - makes a lot of sense. How do you feel about dealing with the... unreliability of debuffs landing, out of curiosity? I just feel like when a debuff fails to land, I created negative action economy, which I assume is even more debilitating at higher difficulty. Like I said, I like the extra debuffs, but I generally focus on mechanisms for "free" application.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

Honestly? I don't find most debuffs unreliable, and the ones that are unreliable, I only utilize on rounds where I already have control of the momentum and am trying to snowball the victory faster. An example of that would be the Gunner's Slowing Bullet - I find it's not reliable enough for my tastes, so I only use it in situations where I'm just trying to further secure existing momentum and don't need my Gunner to perform another action that turn, or in situations where Slowing Bullet is the only option available to get the result I want before the relevant target's AT comes up. This also comes down to just knowing "when" to use something - for example, a Ranger's Rooting Shot is especially powerful in the first two rounds of a battle, when you can stagger the opponent's formation. Rooting the correct units at the correct times is no different than temporarily K.O.ing them.

"What do you do when it fails?" is no different from asking what you do when you miss because of an opponent's evasion options, and that all comes down to your macro-planning. Are you using the map to create choke-points to minimize how many relevant actions the opponent makes per-turn? Are you using the above-mentioned Rooting Shot, or a unit with Counter: Root to stagger the opponent's formation and reduce their ability to take relevant ATs? Is Kyrie taking point with Counter: Slow to reduce the enemy formation's overall AT momentum? That bit about Healing reversing your momentum also works the other way around - put the opposing team (via not just your status but your defensive posture, etc.) into positions where they can't secure kills, and use Heal to negate the ATs of the non-lethal attacks that get through.

For example, my "core" team is:

Marked / Fellblade / Counter: Slow / Health Expert / Evasion Up
Templar / Fellblade / Absorb Mana / Health Expert / Evasion Up
Gunner / Mercenary / Mystic Shield / Health Expert / Evasion Up
Druid / Gambler / Counter: Root / Health Expert / Economy
Wizard / Mender / Counter: Renew / Health Expert / Economy
Mender / Plague Doctor / Absorb Mana / Health Expert / Economy (*)

(*) This one fluctuates some based on feeling but this is the "default".

As you can see, I have layers of redundancy. Counter: Root and Counter: Slow are guaranteed tempo. Mystic Shield is guaranteed positive economy. All the units have access to comparable status effects, except the Wizard, allowing whichever one has current AT to deal with any immediate threat, compensate for a miss, etc. Aggressive utilization of Economy and Absorb Mana allows relevant units to take bigger turns more often. The Druid can just outright Double Cast Charm after stockpiling enough MP, or can Double Cast Bleed (previously Poison) onto a unit, and then Charm it, so it both aides the allied team and starts dying simultaneously. The combination of Mender + Plague Doctor creates a strong comeback mechanic backbone that addresses nearly any situation, while still having Poison, Mass Slow, and Mass Weaken for turns where it's not needed for that role, as well as the ability to spread Rebirths. The Wizard serves as a main healer (of all things) with access to Elemental Locus, able to secure any kills another unit might've missed, or that might be set up via an active Poison or Bleed effect, before the damage can be reversed.

Trying to win wars of Action Economy via a damage race only work when your damage is actually superior to the opponent's. Once you meet your match in damage, it's important to force the opponent to play your game, rather than letting yourself be drawn into playing theirs. Its not just the actions you take, but the castles you set up and choke-points you hold that can deprive opponents of precious economy. This is still an SRPG rather than a standard turn-based RPG, after all.

[Ikarius]

That is really useful- thank you so much for sharing!

One more thing I'd like to ask; I see one story char/skill in there, and I also don't see much of anything being utilized from badge classes. Are you intentionally limiting yourself in avoiding badge classes, or is there some other reason they're not in there?

I simply... haven't gotten to fiddling with most of the badge classes yet, so I was leaving them out of the conversation thus far.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

It's a bit of both. Even playing on max settings, I still prefer to play in the ways I like unless the game forces me not to. In this case, it's utilizing my own team of generics, using the "roles" I've given them and changing them as little as possible between fights. While Yates is certainly strong and Bzaro is pretty much the best character in the game, I use my story-based units on the secondary teams I keep for things like treasure hunting and other sidequest bits to prevent my main team's levels from getting too high. So, I set all the story classes aside, pretty much. Even Marked is only really being used for its growths - before the 0.9.1 update, I'd have called its skillset barely useful at all - and actually had Kyrie spend most of the game as a Mercenary, instead. Sometimes, she finds herself going back to that job, anyway, as it's one of the better physical options overall, should a fight demand her to be particularly potent.

As for the Badge Classes, I don't use them on my main formation mainly because I prefer just playing with the baseline of Classes. They're - again - elements that are used on my side formations to various degrees. It's not that they're bad, though - one of them is easily the best non-Bzaro class in the game. But, even if I didn't have that preference, I can only think of one - maybe two - I'd use over my current choices, because when I craft my units I look for very particular problem-solving tools rather than just powerful combinations.

[Alilatias]

Speaking as someone that barely bought the game a week ago but loved it so much to put in about 50 hours and cleared all content I know of to the end of the current release (and also streamed my playthrough for a friend, although I now realize because of said friend that a developer was probably watching me play too)...

I think Kyrie's Marked class falls off *hard* by endgame. The Holy skills added in the recent update were a nice touch, but I find that most people will use Kyrie as a front line combatant and thus she won't have the Mind stat for the majority of the skills in the tree to do any respectable damage by late-game. I've found that Anadine's Demon Knight class basically does everything better than Kyrie's Marked class does (along with having good synergy with other classes due to Demonic Might and Cleave, while Marked kind of just exists in comparison), especially when taking its final ability into account.

Kyrie's Marked class does have some advantages over Demon Knight, but I find those advantages to be extremely situational due to elemental resistances. Her one ability that sacrifices a chunk of her HP to inflict high dark damage is barely ever used because of the dark resistances of a lot of enemies in the game, not to mention the fact that it has a small MP cost compared to Anadine's version which is physical, now consumes less HP, and uses no MP at all. I think the update should have included a Holy version of this too (or replace this and the Burst skills with something unique, like maybe something that pulls an enemy to Kyrie and would also inflict any possible environmental/elevation damage - pulling an enemy who can't swim into water would be pretty hilarious. Or maybe something that suppresses all buffs on an enemy target, including those granted by equipment, or something that suppresses MP regeneration).

(I imagine there might be an unreleased endgame piece of equipment that might flip the situation around to make the Marked class rather powerful, though. Like, say, maybe an item that equalizes the Attack and Mind stats to whichever is higher.)

---

I eventually turned my Kyrie into a Gunner/Knight dual-wielding All For One sniper, and that was probably one of the most insane class combinations I've seen in this game.

The one thing I've noticed in this game is that you can get punished hard for doing enough damage to knock an enemy into critical range but fail to kill them, which leads to something like Critical: Rebirth triggering and/or they just heal themselves back up to full immediately after. But with a dual wielding gunner that has All for One, you'll get the extra damage needed to finish them off. Running into enemies that have Mystic Shield also isn't much of a problem with that setup.

(Ironically, for the Tourney fights at the end of the current build, I found Round 2 to be much harder than rounds 3 and 4, due to how defensive that team is and the fact that they also had dual wielding gunner/knights that used One for All.)

My team setup is like this:

- Kyrie: Gunner/Knight
(Her entire point is to wreck everything that survives an attack from another party member with All for One while dual wielding guns. This also lets her inflict damage through an enemy's Mystic Shield.)

- Anadine: Demon Knight/Templar
(High physical damage not beholden to any element. Honestly, Kyrie and Anadine had the same role for me throughout most of the game, until the end fights showed me that I had tactical weaknesses and I had to swap one of them to compensate.)

- Custom 1: Wizard/Mender + Double Cast/Blood Magic
(She used to be a Sorcerer that would nuke whole maps, but by endgame I found that this fell off a lot due to enemies having counters designed to shut that down. Wizard is better for nuking specific enemies before they even get a turn, and Locus spells work well with Kyrie's All for One shenanigans. Oh, and doublecasting single target spells results in All for One triggering *twice*.)

- Custom 2: Princess/Alchemystic + Blood Magic
(Princess is pretty busted because of built in Double Cast and the Quicken spell. Doublecasting quicken on your party members opens up a ton of tactical options. Mostly of the 'burst enemies down before they can act' kind. This character spent most of the game primarily as a healer and Haste spammer.)

- Custom 3: Ranger/War Mage + Know Weakness II/Versatile
(A personal favorite of mine. Even if he's not as effective as the others anymore in terms of damage, his Arcane Archer setup was incredible in the mid phases of the game. The main thing that holds this back late game now is due to his lower attack and mind stats compared to the specialized fighters, which is why I chose to give him the hat that provides the constant Attack and Mind buffs. I don't see Ranger as a particularly weak class, as I feel the main benefit of going Ranger is to get Know Weakness I and Evasion Up without needing to use your two custom passive slots for them. Because of that and his Know Weakness II and the endgame bow, he has a base 80% critical hit rate, which can be sent to 100% with Scout.

Before Versatile was nerfed, I'd usually get enough MP through critical hits with Imbued Edge to use Sniper Shot by turn 3. Now, I usually have to wait until turn 5. Since the MP from Versatile scales based on the amount of max MP the character has, this kind of build is probably most effective if you spend a lot of time leveling as a class that has high MP growth to begin with. Also, Rooting Shot has really good tactical applications too. It helped me a lot against certain dual-wielding swordsmen, particularly one late game swordswoman boss who was reduced to casting far less dangerous ranged spells while I went after the caster with everyone else.)

- Custom 4: Lord/Duelist + Cleave/Evasion Up
(This character just wrecks anything with an elemental weakness, then runs to something else with Cleave and wrecks that with Kyrie's help. He essentially has the same sort of role that Anadine has, just more built for defense since I have him using a one-handed weapon in order to use a shield for the evasion boost. The gear setup I have for him resulted in him having something like 60% evasion, so I feel rather comfortable sending him into groups of enemies alone with the confidence that he'll survive and eat up the turns of anything that tries to go after him. I gave both him and Anadine the teleportation boots, so that they could more easily teleport behind enemies and don't have to worry about elevation at all.)