Bulwark is just Fighter renamed. Berserker was always a separate class. Archmages were one class, then they were several classes (Tempest, etc.), then they were one class again.
I don't know how popular each class is.
Yeah, Final Master brought this up in chat.
I figure it actually backed up my point to correct, in the sense that it means Berserker legitimately seems to win more than Archmage, popularity for popularity. But ehn, doesn't matter much.
You can still be killed by something that puts all your escapes on cooldown, or knocks down your sustained talents (and puts them on ridiculously long cooldown), or by confusion and losing a couple coin tosses in a row, or by being slowed just enough that things get to hit you twice in a row, etc.
The first is generally extremely bad luck. Stun and Brainlock only put a fixed number(4 and 1?) skill on cooldown when they go into effect, and can't impact instants. It's very easy to wait out Brainlock, as it does nothing much else, too, and Stun, while a powerful status, still usually can be healed off by most classes in the earlygame-they have to go out of their way to lose their physical Wild infusion in the first ten levels, for the most part. In the interests of paranoia, I've kept that until hitting East or longer, sometimes(and then realize I'm never using it half the time).
Knocking out your sustained talents isn't actually a product of any status skill, I believe-even Silence doesn't do that(Thankfully). Only Disperse Magic and Corrupted Negation can do that, and those are very rare. Mana Clash can too, but only if your Mana's reduced to 0.
Confusion actually is better odds than a coin toss for movement, interestingly. If you're in a hallway, and attempt to move, the options for Confusion are moving the direction you want(50% at least), or moving randomly. But if it tries to move into a wall, you will keep your turn. And if it moves randomly in the direction you want, you're still moving that way. So in a hallway, you have up to a 75% chance to move the direction you want-this makes it better than gambling on escapes many times.
Slows are interesting because they're one of the quieter killers. They have fatal potential, but they're rarely incredibly long, and relatively few enemies have them, and lower impact Slows are much more common early(which have much less lethal of an impact than, say, Confusion). I think a part of the reason they kill people is because of this; It's easy to ignore them and live, until you get hit by a really good one. But they're a physical status and can get lifted off and dealt with a lot of the same ways that Stun can be.
In the early game it's even worse, because you can get hit by things you've got no way to cure (like diseases that do 40 damage per turn for 10 turns, when you haven't seen a magical wild infusion anywhere in the whole game yet). That particular nastiness is due to the random "rares" that are pretty much everywhere, and can hit you with pretty much anything.
Actually, if it's a disease, I think you're describing the (various name) Disease melee attacks that Ghouls and Vampires get, not a Rare trait. Probably you hadn't noticed because all the enemies that have this skill are poor at accuracy, and you drew a rare with an Accuracy bonus and that skill.
There are, of course, some nasty magical statuses off rares, but one of the nastiest(Impending Doom) was recently nerfed so that it is possible for a healing reliant character to live through, and Curse of Death(another) rarely seems to finish people, for some reason(probably the relatively lower damage).
Rare enemies are certainly nasty, but they're sort of an element of that knowledge thing; Rare enemies can do high damage, good status, or have extreme durability, and they all get this by functioning like a player class-once you know what class, you can begin to figure out the ups and downs they have, what they're vulnerable to. They are nasty in a lot of ways.
I would really like to see that class just be displayed in their stats, on a related note. This function's already in debug, and it would make life a little easier for newbies who aren't used to checking stats yet.
If you're level 20+ and fully equipped, perhaps. (If you've made it far enough into the Far East, definitely.) Otherwise, you're dependent on lucky item drops for some kinds of status.
That's true enough, to a degree, but it depends on the class, too.
Many melee classes get Unflinching Resolve, which will heal off various status at a surprisingly high rate, every turn. It's kinda like an unreliable but permanent Providence.
Cursed get Relentless, which is probably the best status resist skill in the game.
Sun Paladins get Providence.
Certainly, there are some physical fighters with no answers, that are heavily linked to the RNG for what they can do about status, but in general, those fighters also have range attacks.
I think the exceptions are mostly Rogue types, and Rogues are definitely a hard luck case for status(the only real mitigation they have for status is using Defense to not get hit by it in the first place)...but I think that having flawed classes in certain directions is okay. It makes class diversity more interesting.