Hardest Class

[mirrizin]

rogues and shadowblades would definitely out trump a berserker with SOD (or STD if you want to use target instead of opponent )

True, berserkers have a chance to kill in one hit, but the rogues and shadowblades can output 2.5k+ in one turn.

Sorry, but SOD?

And I also haven't played lategame rogues as much. I'm sure there's a shift that happens as their sneakiness and crit hit odds change...

I took SOD from final masters post (single opponent damage)

right now there is a point where stealth seems to work, and then suddenly things start to notice you again...

Gotcha. And SOD is nice, but is this regular SOD or something (as was my experience playing a early to mid game rogue) that you get a big hit once every ten hits and the rest are scratches?

The Old Forest ate me alive every time because, sure, you can annihilate one monster with a crit hit, but then you've got ten more right behind him and then you have to wait for your powers to recharge. I guess you then rely on stun, but it's certainly more awkward than the "wade through with your blade" approach of warriors or the "ballistic missile" routine you can pull with a strong archemage. By their dependence on unreliable special abilities like sneakiness or dirty fighting, rogues are dicier to play, less predictable. This is probably appropriate (and I can see the drawbacks to giving a PC a reliable means of invisibility early on,) but I think it makes them harder to learn.

Sneakiness is probably something very hard to design well, so no discredit to darkgod if it's not perfect, but it's something that could probably use some tweaks between total invisibility and "Emperor's Got No Clothes" situations.

Then again, I've been playing archemages out of grief for my last successful shadowblade, so I definitely have more experience with the spellslingers.

[Final Master]

I find that to be the fun (outside of total control of movement) that shadowblades and especially rogues. I love getting chains of criticals regardless of back stab, and even though it's not a guaranteed strategy, it is one that I think is definitively viable. I don't think I've even attempted to make a stealthy rogue yet, I've always went with the 'maximize damage via criticals as much as possible' route. Sure, it makes the game a bit harder but to me it's more fun than always sneaking around and trying to one shot everything. I prefer to see a message screen fill with "foo performed a critical hit!". They are trickier to play than most other classes, and that's why I put the ease to use variable in my chart. Just because a class is easy to play doesn't mean it's a good class to play as, and the it goes the other way as well.