What are the differences in the classes?

Trinque

Sort of a broad question, but as someone relatively new it has been rather difficult to find any good information on what the roles of the classes actually. I have read through the scrolls and through the abilities of every class but a lot of the mechanics I can't find much explanation on and so it makes it difficult to formulate a good idea on what the classes are really about. Unless someone could point me to a good resource that answers my questions, I'd like to ask a few things about each class as a whole.

1. How does each class operate in a 1v1 setting, whether hunting or PvP.
2. How does each class operate in a group setting.
3. What are the main weaknesses of each class.
4. What are the main strengths of each class.

The roleplay and flavor text of the classes is very well explained but it's the general mechanics of each class that I am having a hard time finding any information about. So I hope to foster responses with this thread that will help both me and future people in deciding a class from a gameplay perspective as well as a roleplay perspective. So please give good answers on the classes you are familiar with.

As an example I'm looking for something like this:
Priest
1. They are really terrible at killing things, but are nearly impossible to kill due to healing
2. They spend time healing allies and resurrecting
3. They're weak to getting burst down in fights and they can feel sometimes tedious or repetitive.
4. They're always in demand so you can always feel useful
(This is just an example as I do not know anything of this class, but just an idea of what I'm looking for)

Xli

Blujixapug

Here is a simplistic overview of how each class functions in 1v1 PVP that will leave out most of the finer details. When I phrase it like that, it doesn't sound very helpful, but I already wrote it all out so here you go.

Alchemist: ???

Apostate: Deal two afflictions at a time via Evileye, plus heavy afflictions via summoned daemons. Drain mana, instakill at <50% mana.

Bard: Deal two afflictions at a time afflictions via rapier/Voicecraft combo, plus more afflictions and effects via Tunesmithing and Songbirds, and passive Harmonics effects. Also deal significant damage.

Blademaster: Deal damage + limb damage via sword attacks, building towards limb breaks. Can combo attacks with a single Striking affliction at a time with their slash/strike combo. Can inflict heavy bleeding, instakill at >800 bleeding (or is it >1000? not sure).

Druid: Deal damage + limb damage via morph attacks, building towards limb breaks. Can combo attacks with Hydra morph attacks. Heavy passive damage from bees. Damage and limb-break focused. Can instakill at <50% health.

Knights (Infernal, Paladin, Runewarden): All knights share the primary combat skill of Chivalry, and their attacks revolve around dual-wielding. Deal damage + limb damage + two venom afflictions at a time via Doubleslash (DSL). Can kill via damage, the prep-based heavy burst damage of Disembowel, or Cleave. Infernals have Vivisect in Necromancy which is an instakill if the target has both legs and arms broken. Paladins have some affliction-conditional instakill of their own in Devotion that I forget the conditions of. Runewardens have no such instakill, but runes and runeblades in Runelore strengthen their DSL in various ways.

Jester: Obnoxious trick-based playstyle involves spending time dealing no damage or afflictions while adding fashions to a puppet of the target, then consuming those fashions to deal heavy damage or afflictions. Often kill via the timed jack-in-the-box instakill after disabling the target with heavy afflictions.

Magi: Largely damage-based with damage spells that can be stacked up to deal heavy, delayed burst damage. Strong room-wide passive effects via vibrations (Crystalism). Some affliction capabilities. Have the trump card of Retardation, which delays all commands entered in the room by 1 second, and permits only 1 command be entered at a time (not the most accurate explanation, you have to experience it).

Monk: Deal heavy damage + limb damage with Tekura combos, building towards chains of limb breaks.

Occultist: Deal heavy afflictions via Tarot + Chaos entities, focusing on overloading with afflictions. Can instakill if you have enough afflictions.

Priest: Primarily focus on draining mana via their angel, can instakill at <50% mana. Additional damage and affliction capabilities.

Sentinel: Deal damage + limb damage via morph attacks, building towards limb breaks. Animal entourage deals damage/afflictions/strips defenses. Rapid affliction potential via handaxes. Can prepare a location by trapping exits, causing various powerful effects if a target moves through trapped exits.

Serpent: Deal two afflictions at once via doublestab. Can combo doublestabs with illusioned messages they specify, making it difficult for the target to determine which afflictions are genuine and which are fake. Can use Hypnosis to prepare burst chains of afflictions. The definitive affliction class, with a high skill floor and high skill cap.

Shaman: Use Vodun dolls for similar preparation-and-payoff to jester puppets. Instead of jesters' tricks, shamans can rapidly deliver a wide variety of masked afflictions via Curses.

Sylvan: Deal damage + limb damage + 1 venom affliction via Thornrend, building towards layering enough limb breaks to prevent the target from curing the Heartseed instakill. Also have strong damage capabilities via bees and Elementalism spells.

Trinque

Wow, some great responses already. I appreciate all of it. I find this very helpful and hope it can be equally as helpful for others as well.

Borran

@Daier I would love to see the rest of the classes. I'm learning so much about classes that I never get to fight.

Athrax

Runewarden
1. Great melee.  Extremely high damage with venoms and optional runeblade effects.  Particulary nairat (freezing), and hugalaz(hailstorm proc).  Very straight forward and mechanical setup for disembowel, with the option to damage stack with runes.  Engage/lunge makes mobile combat for the opponent a risk.
2. Totems, rune sketching, smudging make for great support in stationary groups and raids.
3. I'm struggling to find a real weakness.  Not a ton of ranged damage, but between thurisaz and bows, I'm not sure I'd call this a weakness.  No instakill, maybe (but disembowel is fairly reliable as one)
4. High utility for both raiding and hunting.  Strong solo combat.  Raido is a great escape ability. 

Valdus

WTB @Daeir to finish his class explanations. I like reading them, since it gives so much insight into how OTHERS see the classes.

Aepas

I'll just talk about druids because druids are so amazing.

Driuds provide possibly the highest damage in the smallest amount of time given their strength and bees. Reflexed Maul and bees is very good and powerful, especially if you bought a lupine bow and feel like adding meteors in as well. Druids are also arguably the best limb prep class in the game. This is because their limb prep comes from a flat amount. (always four to break) rather than having to figure out damage and a persons health. The hydra is an amazing morph that allows for a free head attack to prep limbs, so you can throw axes, prone enemies, paralyse them, and all sorts of fun stuff while continuing to prep them effeciently. They have incinerate, which kills when the target is below 50% health, and freezepound which does a 97% damage hit and is only slightly negated by the algiz rune that I have seen. possibly the bard reduction as well. They are difficult yet powerful in 1v1, but take an advanced understanding of combat mechanics to be good at them. (unless you just but lvl3 strenght and lvl3 knuckles and just lolmaul everyone)

They are amazing support allies as well. They can increase the health regeneration of anyone, barrier anyone, remove harmonics, resurrect, conceal and all sorts of handy things. I don't know how the new staff swing works, but I'd imagine they can prone a whole group of enemies now as well. (possibly just one person). The hydra web is amazing in group combat, as it bypasses buckawns amulet so you can web anyone no matter the setting, and incinerate will kill anyone in a jiffy. Grove lightning is also nice, though not as powerful as a bow it delivers some very specific afflictions like blackout/stupidity/epilepsy that are unique to lightning only. (in terms of LOS combat)

the weakness of a druid is they are amazingly slow. Each attack is around 3 seconds, which is devastating agaisnt a blademaster who can just keep proning and impaling you on every hit. some knights are even fast enough to do it, but a knight impale is not quite as scary. They are slow and cumbersome in general and lack of lot of the 1v1 potency in early games that other classes get. Also, hunting is slow, even if you do have health regen high enough to outlast most npc's

Their main strength is their diversity and tankyness. While they don't have the best armor, Vigour, vitality, and a passive sip bonus make them a force to be reckoned with when it comes to their overall health pool.

Druid is the most damn fun class I've played. Make evil druids plz

Valdus

Aepas, I'd like to say that I've been playing IRE muds for years now and as such I've pretty much seen every class available and know at least a little about it. Before I read your description of Druids, I had absoilutely zero desire to play one. Now I'm wondering if there's money in this months budget to allow for a Druid alt to be made.

Excellent post, friend.

Sena

Daeir said:

Shaman (played only VERY briefly)

1. Decent basher with high mitigation and regeneration, but comparatively low damage overall.

Shaman has nearly the highest bashing damage in the game. Pre-traits (thanks to raja stats/balance) they actually did have the highest fully-artied damage (though only slightly ahead of monk, which is much tankier and with less willpower drain). Defensively, they're rather poor compared to other classes with bashing runes, but being able to easily keep runes permanently instead of having to get them re-sketched every hour makes a big difference. Uruz gives good regeneration, but sketching ground rooms in every room isn't very practical and will slow you down, so it mostly only matters when fighting a long time in a single room, or bashing dangerous things where you'd need to hit and run.

Iocun

I sometimes wonder why serpents are always touted to be so utterly amazing with LoS, while it is merely mentioned as a footnote for knights. No doubt, serpent LoS is very powerful, but knight archery is just as much. Serpents have no ability to increase arrow damage beyond what knights can do and accuracy is no issue for knights with artie bows either (especially with the marksman trait). Snipe hiding the attacker's name is a neat feature, but not particularly relevant in most group fights, which only leaves evade as a bonus, which can no doubt be helpful for sniping, but isn't actually needed most of the time.

And pre accuracy nerf, druids/sentinels were easily the most powerful archers with artie bows.

P.S. How  can serpents give 4 afflictions per second? I guess with a lot of luck you can technically give five afflictions at once (two from dstab, one from hypnosis, one snake hit, one relapsing affliction), but that would be a single event, and not something you'd do "per second".

Antonius

Iocun said:

I sometimes wonder why serpents are always touted to be so utterly amazing with LoS, while it is merely mentioned as a footnote for knights. No doubt, serpent LoS is very powerful, but knight archery is just as much. Serpents have no ability to increase arrow damage beyond what knights can do and accuracy is no issue for knights with artie bows either (especially with the marksman trait). Snipe hiding the attacker's name is a neat feature, but not particularly relevant in most group fights, which only leaves evade as a bonus, which can no doubt be helpful for sniping, but isn't actually needed most of the time.

Can't Serpents get 100% accuracy using Snipe without Aiming now, though? That's definitely not possible for Knights, so archery is a reasonable amount slower if you want to guarantee every shot will hit. In terms of damage, though, nothing to separate the two.

Strata

Awesome write-ups @Daeir and @Blujixapug. A friend of mine was thinking about starting a character and was asking many questions. I sent him to this thread.

He sounded most interested in Apostate and Shaman.

Edit:

When I asked him why, he said because either of those two classes he thought would be cool to role-play. This is good.

That being said, it would be great if those that are more experienced with specific classes posted short write-ups on the "typical" role-play styles of each class.

By "typical" I mean "how most players tend to role-play a particular class" since there are those that play outside of typical, e.g. @Iocun, the knightly serpent.

Iocun

Daeir said:

That's what I meant by high burst. I didn't mean to say that they could reliably get off 4 affs a second, since that would be ludicrous. I just felt it was important to categorize Serpents as a burst affliction class rather than a momentum based one like say Apostate or Shaman. My bad for wording it poorly!

Yeah,  I realize you were talking about burst damage and not a constant thing. I was merely wondering about the term "per second", which implies a repetition of sorts. I do agree that serpents are somewhat of a burst affliction class (I guess somewhere between momentum and burst, in reality), but those bursts are more in the range of 1.5 afflictions per second, under optimal conditions. (About 1 aff/second from artied out dstab, assuming only small delays from rebounding/hindering, 0.33 affs/second from hypnosis, 0.15 random affs/second or so from the snake).

1.5 affs per second is still pretty damn fast, mind you. (Not that affliction speed in itself is all that crucial though, as long as it's distinctly faster than herb balance.)

Antonius said:

Can't Serpents get 100% accuracy using Snipe without Aiming now, though? That's definitely not possible for Knights, so archery is a reasonable amount slower if you want to guarantee every shot will hit. In terms of damage, though, nothing to separate the two.

I never wait between aiming and shooting anyways. The only reason I ever stop aiming is if I'm running low on endurance.

Sena

Daeir said:

Couple this with enhanced gebu/gebo armor and I wouldn't really class Shaman as defensively poor, not by any stretch.

I only said they were defensively poor when comparing them to other classes with bashing runes. Having easy access to runes is a pretty big defensive boost.

Daeir said:

The damage portion surprises me, though. Have you posted bleed damage anywhere else before? It felt quite lackluster to me, even at trans Curses.

I'm not 100% certain of the numbers, but I think it was 300 damage for a 12 int, trans curses bleed. With swiftcurse and raja balance, balance was 0.9 seconds (probably 1 second with nimble now, but I haven't timed it). Assuming optimal swiftcursing, that's around 260 dps before intelligence bonus. Here are some other bashing attacks for comparison.

With artefacts bleed is even better, since it's a magical attack so it can get +20% damage from collars. I don't think that's enough to give it better damage than monk combos (since they also have knuckles for increased damage), but I don't think anything else can match it.

Iocun

Yeah, I made a shaman alt once and hunting was amazing - if not for that ghastly mana/willpower drain.

Eld

Iocun said:

Yeah, I made a shaman alt once and hunting was amazing - if not for that ghastly mana/willpower drain.

The nice thing about it is that you get amazing hunting for about 15 minutes till you run out of willpower, and then you're forced to take a break and go do something else.

Xer

How's the willpower decrease on bleed in comparison for hunting now? I seem to remember the main drain from willpower coming from having to keep up swiftcurse as well, so it's entirely possible that it's still woefully short

Sena

The willpower cost has been reduced multiple times since I was a shaman, so I'm not sure what it's like now.

Arador

WRT Knight Archery. If the target is outdoors you also have your falcon. Makes quite a difference.

Trevize

Xer said:

How's the willpower decrease on bleed in comparison for hunting now? I seem to remember the main drain from willpower coming from having to keep up swiftcurse as well, so it's entirely possible that it's still woefully short

It's still kinda bad, but better than it used to be.

Oh, and I'll second bleed being insanely good. Not that it's needed after Sena said it, but still! Be sure to re-use swiftcurse before the last one falls off - it halves the bal/eq times for curses, which includes the next swiftcurse.

Trevize

Sena said:

Daeir said:

Couple this with enhanced gebu/gebo armor and I wouldn't really class Shaman as defensively poor, not by any stretch.

I only said they were defensively poor when comparing them to other classes with bashing runes. Having easy access to runes is a pretty big defensive boost.

Daeir said:

The damage portion surprises me, though. Have you posted bleed damage anywhere else before? It felt quite lackluster to me, even at trans Curses.

I'm not 100% certain of the numbers, but I think it was 300 damage for a 12 int, trans curses bleed. With swiftcurse and raja balance, balance was 0.9 seconds (probably 1 second with nimble now, but I haven't timed it). Assuming optimal swiftcursing, that's around 260 dps before intelligence bonus. Here are some other bashing attacks for comparison.

With artefacts bleed is even better, since it's a magical attack so it can get +20% damage from collars. I don't think that's enough to give it better damage than monk combos (since they also have knuckles for increased damage), but I don't think anything else can match it.

Just tested, 0.7s bleed with swiftcurse and nimble, 2s for swiftcurse again with swiftcurse already up. (not sure if anything else is affecting my balance speed? nothing I know of)

Xer

0.7s? That seems fast to me - I remember it used to be 1.0s consistently. Is that just bleed, or curses in general?

EDIT: With swiftcurse up.

Sena

0.7s is faster than old raja, I can't think of why it would be so fast.

Trevize

Xer said:

0.7s? That seems fast to me - I remember it used to be 1.0s consistently. Is that just bleed, or curses in general?

EDIT: With swiftcurse up.

Just did more testing, it seems to vary from 0.7 to 0.9. That was just bleed, but I believe they're the same.

Eld

1 second with swiftcurse and nimble is what I remember, as well.

Trevize

BTW: (0.06s latency)

Fastest: 0.704s

Slowest: 1.095s

Average seems to be somewhere between 8.5-9s, from tracking clearing Dun and the Vertani both.

Averi

@Strata  To aide your friend, here are some classes I have RP'd at in my lifetime.  I might be too late though. 

Bard

It is definitely my favourite class of all times because one: it's unaligned which means there's just more stuff/places you can do/go and less people telling you how you should act and stuff. I like the flexibility bard gives rp wise.  It's awesome at performing, pranking, hunting, combat, running away, and most things so you can pretty much play it however you want. However, it should be mentioned, most bards that I know of do some type of performing/crafting.  Although it is an extremely combat effective class, if you only do combat, people may not consider you to be a "real" bard. 

There are three things it's terrible at though: fighting with range, travelling fast, and being sneaky.  The last two have strong rp implications in my opinion.  This means you're pretty much like shouting out your presence every time you go in a place.  And although we are great at getting out of tricky situations with our insane grouping of defensive skills, it's also really easy to track us down afterwards. Edit: There may be some shunning if you don't do art or if you are not very charismatic/nice (in character. I am sure you are all wonderful ooc).  But the main bardic community seems to be in Cyrene so it really doesn't matter if you are mhaldorian. 

Jester

It has been like 100 achaean years since I played jester so I don't know how much things have changed.  When I played it though, I felt like people automatically expected you to be "silly".   My character was a rather melancholy crafts-woman and thus I felt sort of burdened by that expectation. There are many people however, who play jester very seriously and do fairly well.  But I think the connotation is there. Edit: People automatically assume you are weird once they know your class. xD

Druid

Tree people.  I have given more environmental protection speeches as this class than I've given as my real life self.  That is saying something cause my real life class is sort of a druid.  But Treees! Naturee! you have to care a bit about them.  Even as a mhaldorian druid like @Aepas, I suspect, you tie your views into nature somehow?  My character is unaligned.  She hates all cities equally and sees Eleusis as a pseudo-city but still... ALL the trees! Edit: The main druid/forestal community is quite welcoming of rogues, unless you are mhaldorian? maybe?

Monk

Whereas "combat-obsessed" was a bad thing for bards, it's definitely a good thing for monks.  I feel more people in this class do combat than the other ones I talk about.  We punch stuff and kick stuff and punch more stuff. Also unaligned though so there are many rp possibilities.  But monk is also not sneaky, bad at travelling fast, and bad at running away (compared to bard).  I guess, when you're that good at killing things, you don't really have to run away.  Edit: I feel like there's no mutual shunning beyond obvious enemies in this class. 

Occultist

I've only spent a very brief time as this class.  So far, I love it because I can be hidden.  It has alliances towards Ashtan so there are a limited amount of ways you can really play this class (or so I feel so far).  The occie house is a close knit, fairly good rping community that tends to keep to themselves and shun outsiders.  So if your goal is to get to know everyone in the sapience within the first decade of life, this is probably not the class for you.  Edit: Rogues will be shunned by the main house. 

I actually know nothing about being an apostate or a shaman.  My brief time in the Blood Congregation as a Bard was fairly pleasant though. It's a nice house but like what I said for Occultist, not the place to be when you want to meet everyone and not have certain restrictions.  Shaman seems much more unrestricted, aside from Targ, all other cities are fine with the class I think.  However, I hear people say that there aren't many people who play the class.  I don't know if that changed or not.  

Strata

Averi said:

@Strata  To aide your friend, here are some classes I have RP'd at in my lifetime.  I might be too late though. 

...

Not late at all. Thank you for this! It is true that all of this is completely subjective and anyone could play any class however they see fit. But I think for someone just starting out, finding their unique role in the game world can be confusing at first. I have only played serpent, so I will share that:

Serpent:

Sneaky people. Many turn to this class because it is the obvious thief, spy, or assassin due to the class skills. Almost every other class can be one or more of these things, however, serpent provides a swiss army knife to do them efficiently. Many people who play rogues tend to play serpents - and with a skillset for infiltration and escape, one has the ability to pick and choose their friends/foes for whatever reasons they see fit. It is my opinion that if one truly

wants to get the most out of RP'ing a serpent, that they leave the confines of any citizenship as soon as possible, or never become a citizen of any city in the first place. That's just how I tend to see things - cities tend to keep their

distance from serpents for obvious reasons (namely theft and espionage) - but also benefit from them in terms of phase checking and espionage against enemies. They are also great as members of city war or security departments

because of this.

Aepas

Averi said:

Druid

Tree people.  I have given more environmental protection speeches as this class than I've given as my real life self.  That is saying something cause my real life class is sort of a druid.  But Treees! Naturee! you have to care a bit about them.  Even as a mhaldorian druid like @Aepas, I suspect, you tie your views into nature somehow?  My character is unaligned.  She hates all cities equally and sees Eleusis as a pseudo-city but still... ALL the trees! Edit: The main druid/forestal community is quite welcoming of rogues, unless you are mhaldorian? maybe?

I made Aepas before the alchemist stuff came around, which is the only reason his psuedo-belief in evil nature kind of worked. Back then it was just mechanical, but I had to put RP behind it to keep myself as a druid in Mhaldor. Sorta went with a forest is like life, and all life can be brought suffering, blah blah it will get stronger. (after all, look at changes to how it no longer is affected by holobombs! that was mhaldorian doing! +1 RP)

But really, it was a one in a million chance. I got lucky, decided to make something interesting out of it. Druids can -not- be evil.

except for me.

Penwize

Aepas said:

But really, it was a one in a million chance. I got lucky, decided to make something interesting out of it. Druids can -not- be evil.

except for me.

That's really the thing about people wanting to play classes outside of their faction.  It takes someone absolutely exceptional at RPing it out to actually make it work, and there can only be like... one of them.  Anything beyond that dilutes the intention of the class and the whole reason for having them be faction-aligned.