Rate the Classes

[minmay]

ok lets see if i can do this while too tired to see clearly. scaled so that 1 and 5 get used at least once in every category:

bulwark: 1/1/5
berserker: 1/2/5
archer: 2/1/5 (SVN: more like 3/4/4 because traps)
arcane blade: 3/3/5
brawler: 1/1/5
rogue: 3/4/4
shadowblade: 2/5/4
marauder: 1/1/5
archmage: 5/5/4
alchemist: 3/4/4
necromancer: 3/3/4
wyrmic: 2/2/4
summoner: 5/5/4
oozemancer: 3/4/1
stone warden: 3/3/3
sun paladin: 2/2/4
anorithil: 3/3/5
reaver: 5/5/5
corruptor: 5/5/5
cursed: 1/1/4
doomed: 2/2/4
paradox mage: 3/2/2
temporal warden: 3/4/3
mindslayer: 3/4/5
solipsist: 4/4/4
adventurer: 6/6/-3

consider these +/- 1

[Doctornull]

5 is a solidly tested class that needs little or no changes. (Ranger)

So, uh, what's this solid "Ranger" thing?

(Previous incarnation of the Archer, I'm guessing.)

[tylor]

Alchemist is 4/5 at least. Smoke bomb + quarz (knockback) bombs = very one-sided fights.

[Nori]

Hmm interesting... Well I have 160+ hours in the game and I've yet to win. Been to the east with maybe a half dozen characters and got to the final fight with one. Maybe I should have won by now? I get kind of stuck on a specific class for a while and it usually seems to be ones that have hard starts (cursed and arcane blade) so I spend a lot of time on them, losing...

I agree with Darkgod's post. Everyone is different and plays different. I am very stubborn and often lose a character because I keep trying to beat a boss that I keep dying too. Or because I wasn't paying attention...

Based on my experiences as a apparently mediocre rougelike player I rate the classes I've gotten the farthest as such:
Mindslayer: 3/4/5
The Mindslayer is the only class I've gotten to the end of the game. I had a blast with em and think it is a great class to play.

Cursed: 1/3/4
Cursed are very hard to start with. Recent releases seems to have fixed the problems I had way back when. But still, I get nightmares of all the poor dwarven cursed I have killed....

Arcane Blade: 2/5/4
Excellent class with great synergies and reasonable talent options. Tough start, but gets to be very powerful.

Archmage: 3/5/5
Great, fun and very diverse class that has a ton of build options. Early can be rough due to low HPs and needing several levels before you have a wide enough range of talents. Can become very powerful late.

Sun Paladin: 4/4/5
Fun class to play with some unique skills and abilities. I feel like with all of the healing, shielding and buffing skills that this class isn't too tough to play throughout. +1 to awesomeness if you play a Skeleton because a Undead Paladin is hilarious, plus I feel they synergize well together.

Rogue: 2/3/5
I personally got really bored when the Rouge. I never felt like it got easier either. Probably just built them wrong.

Paradox Mage: 3/4/4
Blast to play! Lots of nifty talents and a interesting resource mechanic.

Temporal Warden: 2/4/4
I feel like the extreme hybrid nature of this class makes it very hard early. Do you go ranged? Or Melee? Or more utility/damage skills? Nevertheless it is a fun class and plays pretty different from others.

Those are the classes I've gotten reasonably far. I've tried most of the rest of the classes but don't feel like I know them well enough to judge.

[skein]

I think a more useful statistic is the weakness of each class and the strength of each class. To win you have to play to both.

I have won with many classes now on normal difficulty. There are many I have just given up on since they are so painful to play. I would not suggest playing a class I gave up on.

Classes I gave up on,
bulwark(and related) - No aoe, physical combat is underpowered except for stuns. Many things stun immune.
Archers- Lower damage, chance of missing, boring.
Rogues - Stealth was broken, low damage, no aoe.

For the classes I have won with,
many adventurers- my favorite class.

Oozemancer - Incredibly easy early start, three really impressive class trees (ooze, slime, and moss). Lacks power against undead is the major problem and aoe damage is weak.

Alchemist - Incredibly easy start with golem, Best aoe damage in the game. No ability to move and healing is lacking as well. This lack can easily be covered with items. Trick to the class you HAVE to know- most of the core class trees are completely useless including your golem in the end game. You can finish with explosive admixtures 5/5/5/0, and 5 inscriptions for healing/movement. Along with stone alchemy 5/5/1/0. Staff combat is really very powerful as well. They benefit the most by getting stuff from other classes.

Solipist - Aoe is weird, takes a great deal of thought. Not a class to play until you have played all the others.

Archmage - So many options and most of them work. A good starter class. Its strength is that it has no weaknesses.

Mindslayer - The only combat class I like. They are weak in the end game though since nothing scales right. Finer energy manipulation and mindstar mastery are really quite impressive endgame. If you play in the infinte 500 then those 2 trees produce the best combat damage in the game. Gained a great deal when mindstar mastery became trainable.

Summoners - very boring.

Temporal warden and mage- both are fun classes. Both can be hard in the mid game and endgame.

Necromancers - Another very fun class to play with. No real weaknesses.

Sun paladins/ Anothiril - Low damage can get annoying after awhile. Like an alchemist you need to concentrate on escapes.

[minmay]

Against my better judgement, I'll go ahead and do that.

Bulwark:(1/1/5) This whole class and its in-game description is a cruel joke on new players. Basically no defenses at all, combined with really bad ranged attacks and positioning, and even its melee is worse than a lot of other classes.
Berserker: (1/2/5) Similar situation to bulwark but it at least has one very good defensive talent.
Archer: (2/1/5) (SVN: 3/4/4) Ranged combat is definitely an easier start than melee, but the damage is average at best and later in the game you're nearly as helpless as bulwark. In the next version they have traps so they are basically identical to rogue.
Arcane Blade: (3/3/5) Best melee damage in the game...and yet most of the time it's still more effective to just play as a badly gimped archmage.
Brawler: (1/1/5) See bulwark.
Rogue: (3/4/4) Traps are ridiculous, I hope they get removed from the game. You should really have to at least SEE enemies before you can kill them. 4 stability because of trap bugs.
Shadowblade: (2/5/4) Not exactly a great early game, but the instant you get Ambuscade, you're invincible. I forget why I gave this 4 stability.
Marauder: (1/1/5) See bulwark.
Archmage: (5/5/4) Arcane eye from level 1 and you don't even need it because you have 5000-point damage shields. Really bad damage output but it doesn't matter. 4 stability because of various minor spell bugs.
Alchemist: (3/4/4) The golem is sort of like having a much weaker Ambuscade, weaker enough to make it actually go below 5. Alchemist itself has no defenses and worse offense than archmage for a significant portion of the game. 4 stability because of golem bugs.
Necromancer: (3/3/4) Like summoner but a few thousand times more annoying to play and the summons are weaker too. 4 stability because of minion bugs and blighted summoning not working.
Wyrmic: (2/2/4) No defense and fairly mediocre ranged attacks, not nearly as sad as something like bulwark though. I also forget why I gave this 4 stability.
Summoner: (5/5/4) Is this class EVER in danger? 4 stability because blighted summoning doesn't work.
Oozemancer: (3/4/1) Good ranged attacks and after a few levels it has excellent summons. AM is a pretty big disadvantage though. 1 stability because Ooze is the only talent tree in the game that consistently causes panics.
Stone Warden: (3/3/3) Can't pick a good race. Very good summons but positioning them is somewhere between annoying and difficult. 3 stability because of summon weirdness and the Eldritch Stone bug.
Sun Paladin: (2/2/4) Horrible damage for melee. Horrible ranged damage too. Doesn't even get good positioning or scouting. Manages to beat bulwark only because its defenses actually do something - not very much, though. 4 because of the Retribution juggling bug.
Anorithil: (3/3/5) Very poor damage, mediocre defenses, but at least it's ranged and Jumpgate is good.
Reaver: (5/5/5) Has some of the best offense in the game because of diseases. Has some of the best defense in the game because of bone shield.
Corruptor: (5/5/5) Like reaver that gets even better damage and Wraithform, but needs more category points (still seems dramatically stronger but I can't possibly put reaver at 4).
Cursed: (1/1/4) Same situation as Brawler etc., though at least it is excellent at moving. 4 stability because of curse/fear bugs and Reckless Charge not working.
Doomed: (2/2/4) Has summons but not very good ones. 4 stability because of curse/fear bugs (not that you'd ever use them...)
Paradox Mage: (3/2/2) Kind of like an archmage if you take away everything that makes archmage good and replace it with some completely insane abusable talents that still don't make up for the class being bad in every other respect. 2 stability because of Precognition, Cease to Exist, and See the Threads being very, very buggy.
Temporal Warden: (3/4/3) Decent ranged attacks, an invincibility talent that's probably even better than Unstoppable, and actual decent positioning. 3 stability because it has Precognition (which seems to screw up slightly less often than Cease to Exist and See the Threads).
Mindslayer: (3/4/5) Very good defense because of shields, and if you really want, augmented mobility. Passable damage all game too.
Solipsist: (4/4/4) Projection is pretty insanely broken, I considered putting this at 5. Inner Demons and Forge Bellows are some of the best talents in the game. 4 stability because of Projection bugs.

[Laerte]

Wyrmics (5/5) - Nice resists and high armor. Fungus from level 1. Even better if going antimagic. Two handed weapons for stun resist or weapon and shield for stunning and assaulting critters. Good ranged attacks.

Summoners (5/5) - Not much to add. Controlling your pets makes for an easy time escorting, opening chests or messing with graves. Can summon an army before the enemies even move. Going antimagic makes everything even better.

Oozemancers (5/5) - Antimagic from level 1. Even better after doing the antimagic quest. Free fungus after the tempest. Synergizing attacks. Good aoe attacks. Slows everything. Lots of summons. Two teleporting skills - one of them can be used inside "no teleport" areas like vaults. Godslayer class.

Celestials (4/4) - Good defenses. Wish the damage was better. Cannot go antimagic

Other classes - Trash / don't care / don't know how to play.

[Razakai]

I'm suprised to see berserker rated so low by many people, I'd put them as a 3/5/5 myself having completed adventure normal with only 2 deaths, both of them on Atamathon (and even those were only from being overconfident). The early game is a little rough depending on what gear you get, but once you get to the East you're virtually unstoppable. There's very few things you can't beat by popping cooldowns, hitting unstoppable when you're about to die, then teleporting away to refresh cooldowns which worked on everything from vor dragons to atamathon. And if a boss isn't completely stun immune like the final boss you can just stunlock them and beat them down in a few turns. Berserker+a few bits of gear gets complete stun immunity and by the end of the game I had a 50%~ chance to remove a negative status every turn to deal with confusion and blind.

[Sradac]

I would rate berserkers low because they are boring as hell, but thats just me

[Faeryan]

I think the early game and late game power differences are rather meaningless to make any differentiation since I see it only as player's adaptation to situation, thus only one rating instead of two.
Also classes have already been there for a while so I'm not going to include stability. This said I'm just rating them with one all around number.


bulwark: 4
berserker: 4
archer: not tried
arcane blade: 3
brawler: 4
rogue: 4
shadowblade: 4
marauder: 5
archmage: 4
alchemist: 2
necromancer: 4
wyrmic: 3
summoner: 1 (boring and OP as hell. My least favorite)
oozemancer: 2 (I like balance in all things. Ooze's power rating deducted one point. Toned down version would most likely get 3 if not 4)
stone warden: 3 (same as above)
sun paladin: 4
anorithil: 4
reaver: 4
corruptor: 5
cursed: 3
doomed: 5
paradox mage: 3
temporal warden: 4
mindslayer: 4
solipsist: 3 (same OP deduction as Ooze but the differing resource management gives back one point)
adventurer: 5 (naturally, cause it has potential to be anything and everything)

My top 3 most interesting classes would be Corruptor, Marauder and Doomed. Interestingly enough I haven't won with any of them. That kinda ups the rating as challenge makes them more interesting.

[binmaze]

Berserker 3 / 4
Rogue 1 / 4
Shadowblade 2 / 4
Archer 3 / 3
Anorithil 0.5 or 3 depending on race / 4
Alchemist 4 / 4
Archmage 4 / 5
Summoner 6 / 6
Oozemancer 5 / 5
Doomed 2 / 4
Solipsist 4 / 4
Adventurer from unplayable to cheat

[jsmile39]

This list is very dependent on the difficulty setting. On Normal difficulty lots of the melee types (brawler, marauder, AB, etc) are insanely OP late game (20k+ dmg per global turn).. but are so bad early game (on Nightmare+) that you might not ever get East (and vice versa).

My list: Normal (in the order that I won... I think)

5/2/5 --Wyrmric (mostly boring, great AE, poor burst/single target damage)
2/5/4 --Arcane Blade (easy start, then very hard from 10-30, post 36 every just starts asxploderizing)
4/5/4 --Reaver (relatively easy the entire way through, prolly the most solid class for a beginner... after you unlock, was it locked?)
1/5/3 --Marauder (first few levels might be easier if you don't do the undead starter heh, insane burst late game)
3/3/4 --Solipsist (boring, think I was asleep most of the the game, oh was that a pun? /yawn)
2/5/5 --Brawler (probably the most gear dependent melee class, can be silly easy or stupid hard depending on the gloves you find)
2/4/4 --Temporal Warden (kind of similar to AB, takes a long time to start the synergies... can be frustrating if you're OCD with hotkey layout)

[Sirrocco]

Worth noting that a *lot* of this is playstyle-dependent. There are certain abilities that some players will consider absolutely vital and/or overpowered, that others simply don't care about at all. For example, tracking abilities - the things that let you take a period of time and a bit of hassle to safely acquire data about the rooms you're moving into before you wake up any of the monsters in them. There are players who swear by them, and find them indispensible (often, NM/Insane players). I personally never invest in the things. I wouldn't use them - why would I pay for them? In a broader sense, individual classes tend to have rough general strategies and tactics that work or don't work for them - sniping from afar, ambush tactics, engage/disengage, straight up charging, and so forth. If the tactic is one that comes naturally to you, those classes are generally pretty straightforward. If it doesn't, you're going to see a lot of fail playing them. (example: mindstar Cursed can get amazingly good at engage/disengage - but they *look* kind of like a brute. If you try to play them as a brute and just use your Rampage to beat down the enemy, as opposed to always having in the back of your mind "okay, when do I start running away for a bit?" then you'll find yourself dying repeatedly. This is a roguelike. If you know what you're doing, then the thing that kills you is almost always going to be mental exhaustion of some sort. Thus, playstyles that are more unpleaasant for you to play are also more likely to kill you, as you run out of the emotional resources to keep checking all the things you need to be checking and to keep prepping all the ways you need to be prepping and you start doing dumb stuff.

The normal/NM split is also a thing - not just in the crippling early game factor, but in that some things that are strong game-long selling points in Normal basically fold up and become useless when pitted against the higher caliber of enemy that shows up in NM.