Class Questions

Jovora

This is for those of you with questions pertaining to the classes of Achaea!

What classes are best at certain types of combat, what classes have the best entry level requirements to get involved in combat, what abilities do... Your general and detailed class questions answered here!

Mishgul

monk is the answer to all your questions afaik.

Idelisa

Especially if the question is, "Which class should I play in Mhaldor to make sure I can't get into Congregation?"

Maht

Here is my Occultist's AB:

Skills         Rank
-------------  ------------
Vision         Adept<------ Venomlist
Avoidance      Inept
Tattoos        Inept
Survival       Transcendent
Weaponry       Expert <------ Throwing
Riding         Inept
Tarot          Transcendent
Domination     Transcendent
Occultism      Transcendent

Miniskills     Rank
-------------  ------------
Constitution   Inept
Thermology     Inept
Frost          Inept
Antidotes      Inept
Fitness        Capable
Galvanism      Inept
Philosophy     Inept
InkMilling     Inept
Gathering      Inept

Due to the credit sale I feel now is a good time to buy. What skills should I finish up before considering "cheap" arties? He's level 78 Grook with 15 int specialisation. Only concerned with combat, in all of its forms.

Tanris

Avoidance and weaponry.

Achilles

tattoos to expert, inkmilling to I think skilled (canvas).  Being able to ink your own starbursts/boars and 3 extra tattoo spots is huge.

Xith

I've been thinking of drawing up a ratings chart to scale each class's combat potential from 1-5.

So Jester gets a 4 on hindering, but a 3 on afflictions and 1 on damage. 2 on hunting or something. 5 on utility, etc.
Occultist would be 4 or 5 on hindering, 4 on afflictions, and 3 on damage. But of course it'd have to be compiled by people who know their classes, rather than myself, who only knows about 40% of all classes.

 

But back to the original question, I vote Magi as a good one for entry combat. You only need Bi-trans + Survival to succeed. Simple mechanics too.
Sylvan really just requires Mono-trans + Survival, as does Druid. I don't know how much weaponry is included in Woodlore, but Sentinel is Bi-trans + Survival + weaponry.
Next in alchemist in terms of cost, because only need bi-trans for the offense. However the offense is very complicated, so not good for newer fighters.
And lastly, I'd say Runewarden in lower-middle tiers is decent with Bi-trans or less. Just a rune or two and stack thurisaz with your swords and you should beat plenty of unartied folks.

Maht

Achilles said:

tattoos to expert, inkmilling to I think skilled (canvas).  Being able to ink your own starbursts/boars and 3 extra tattoo spots is huge.

You're saying that without Superscribe, the skill Canvas provides 3 tattoo spots? I may be misinterpreting, because that seems really strong for such a small investment.

Achilles

No but you get 2 tattoo spots at expert tattoos and one more from ink milling.

Tilly

I am in the midst of deciding whether to focus on this alchemist character with no money for credits, or focusing on a BM that has many more lessons and has transcendent Two Arts (a frustrating decision). I love the Alchemist's utility and RP potential compared to BM, but how is its combat at the moment? Is it easier than BM? How are Alchemists in group combat?

Maht

Tilly said:

I am in the midst of deciding whether to focus on this alchemist character with no money for credits, or focusing on a BM that has many more lessons and has transcendent Two Arts (a frustrating decision). I love the Alchemist's utility and RP potential compared to BM, but how is its combat at the moment? Is it easier than BM? How are Alchemists in group combat?

Alchemists are one of the worst classes for groups or most sizes. They simply take too long to build up a useful offense. You have Tentacles that works against 1 person at a time, can resurrect people, and can potentially get some aurifys off. I don't want to disclose too much about Alchemist 1v1, but I have spent many hours of testing with an Alchemist friend and I can safely say that their offense is very strong if used well - and their strongest kill strategy is probably their easiest. They also get a certain element of surprise against most of the player-base as many people still have no idea what Alchemists are capable of. You will be much more tanky than your Blademaster counterpart due to the beauty of increased sips alchemical robes, and a shield. Bashing is comparable without artifacts.

That being said, Blademaster is incredibly strong, and you can kill a shit-ton of people with very low setup. They also have mechanical "this will definitely kill <person>" strategies that Alchemist really doesn't have. They are much better than Alchemists in practically every group situation.

In terms of ease it really depends on your opponent. I found Blademaster combat to be incredibly boring despite how gainful it was, but I'm biased in that I despise Striking. Blademaster is pretty much an objectively better class though, but Alchemist is underrated by most people. I'd rather play Alchemist any day of the week, and in the end the lesson amount is comparable since you can completely skip Transmutation

Tilly

Maht said:

Tilly said:

I am in the midst of deciding whether to focus on this alchemist character with no money for credits, or focusing on a BM that has many more lessons and has transcendent Two Arts (a frustrating decision). I love the Alchemist's utility and RP potential compared to BM, but how is its combat at the moment? Is it easier than BM? How are Alchemists in group combat?

Alchemists are one of the worst classes for groups or most sizes. They simply take too long to build up a useful offense. You have Tentacles that works against 1 person at a time, can resurrect people, and can potentially get some aurifys off. I don't want to disclose too much about Alchemist 1v1, but I have spent many hours of testing with an Alchemist friend and I can safely say that their offense is very strong if used well - and their strongest kill strategy is probably their easiest. They also get a certain element of surprise against most of the player-base as many people still have no idea what Alchemists are capable of. You will be much more tanky than your Blademaster counterpart due to the beauty of increased sips alchemical robes, and a shield. Bashing is comparable without artifacts.

That being said, Blademaster is incredibly strong, and you can kill a shit-ton of people with very low setup. They also have mechanical "this will definitely kill <person>" strategies that Alchemist really doesn't have. They are much better than Alchemists in practically every group situation.

In terms of ease it really depends on your opponent. I found Blademaster combat to be incredibly boring despite how gainful it was, but I'm biased in that I despise Striking. Blademaster is pretty much an objectively better class though, but Alchemist is underrated by most people. I'd rather play Alchemist any day of the week, and in the end the lesson amount is comparable since you can completely skip Transmutation

Thank you for the info. It was very helpful! Is Aurify hard to pull off in combat situations? What about Reave?

Any other opinons?

Maht

Tilly said:

Maht said:

Tilly said:

I am in the midst of deciding whether to focus on this alchemist character with no money for credits, or focusing on a BM that has many more lessons and has transcendent Two Arts (a frustrating decision). I love the Alchemist's utility and RP potential compared to BM, but how is its combat at the moment? Is it easier than BM? How are Alchemists in group combat?

Alchemists are one of the worst classes for groups or most sizes. They simply take too long to build up a useful offense. You have Tentacles that works against 1 person at a time, can resurrect people, and can potentially get some aurifys off. I don't want to disclose too much about Alchemist 1v1, but I have spent many hours of testing with an Alchemist friend and I can safely say that their offense is very strong if used well - and their strongest kill strategy is probably their easiest. They also get a certain element of surprise against most of the player-base as many people still have no idea what Alchemists are capable of. You will be much more tanky than your Blademaster counterpart due to the beauty of increased sips alchemical robes, and a shield. Bashing is comparable without artifacts.

That being said, Blademaster is incredibly strong, and you can kill a shit-ton of people with very low setup. They also have mechanical "this will definitely kill <person>" strategies that Alchemist really doesn't have. They are much better than Alchemists in practically every group situation.

In terms of ease it really depends on your opponent. I found Blademaster combat to be incredibly boring despite how gainful it was, but I'm biased in that I despise Striking. Blademaster is pretty much an objectively better class though, but Alchemist is underrated by most people. I'd rather play Alchemist any day of the week, and in the end the lesson amount is comparable since you can completely skip Transmutation

Thank you for the info. It was very helpful! Is Aurify hard to pull off in combat situations? What about Reave?

Any other opinons?

Aurify is a fantastic kill for Alchemist and is very reasonable to pull off. It was buffed recently to work when the target is below 60% maximum health and mana. This has a lot synergy with the amount of bleeding that they can cause due to the nature of how most people handle clotting. Reave is a joke, and if you kill someone with it then you could have killed them much sooner with other methods. I'll message you some specifics once my Alchemist friend is around.

Tilly

Thanks again, Maht. Would you also happen to know if Disrupt is useful for anything?

Xith

Disrupt is probably not commonly used. Probably supposed to stop coordination via tells during raids, but again, not too useful. 

Alchemist is a tough class to use, though. At lower levels, you can get by with simple stuff to Aurify, but if you fight anyone with a decent health pool, that will be more difficult, which is where raising their fluids and tossing in random truewracks becomes useful.
If you're going for bleed, obviously temper sanguine first. If you're going for a lock/reave, I'd suggest melancholic and keep your homunculus shrieking to throw off focus balance. Then add the sanguine to do sang/mel truewracks. Adds a bunch of mentals plus reckless/paralysis. Then add one of the others and alternate mel/sang & mel/phleg to really slow up their curing. And finally temper the last, and from there you can either build up the fluid and reave, or alternate your truewracks mel/sang & phleg/chol, which, because they're all hidden, will end up with the opponent locked sooner or later, especially if you manage to inundate phlegmatic for an extra affliction. (need the weariness against fitness).
And of course you can simply temper choleric or melancholic to start to add an extra dose of health/mana damage, make for a faster Aurify or just a straight kill, which a hidden sensitivity could accomplish.

Alchemists are underrated, I think. In a raid, their Iron damage is plenty useful, and in smaller groups, they can support any affliction class because they can individually curse all 5 lock affs, which no other class can do with the same speed.
All that being said, BM combat is probably much easier.

Tilly

Thanks for the answers, you two. I still can't decide, but you're information has been very helpful.

Iocun

Xith said:

And finally temper the last, and from there you can either build up the fluid and reave, or alternate your truewracks mel/sang & phleg/chol, which, because they're all hidden, will end up with the opponent locked sooner or later

Problem is, them being hidden doesn't actually help much against proper curing.

Sanguine: Hits with haemohpilia, recklessness, or paralysis. Recklessness is immediately obvious in almost all cases, paralysis can be checked immediately, so you know instantly which of the three you were hit with.

Phlegmatic: asthma, clumsiness, disloyalty. Smoking costs no balance, so smoke valerian instantly, which will cure disloyalty or tell you if you have asthma. If it didn't cure and go through, you had clumsiness.

Melancholic: anorexia, impatience, stupidity. Just eat goldenseal, which will either cure impatience or stupidity and show anorexia if you have it.

Choleric: nausea, sensitivity, slickness. Smoke valerian to cure a possible slickness instantly. Sensitivity strips deafness so is rather easily detectable by that, leaving nausea.

So, all in all, you usually can very easily check which afflictions you got from the truewracks without wasting balances or diagnosing. You don't easily gain a lock with just piling on semi-random afflictions like that, even less so if they have the clever idea of running/defending/hindering.

Xith

s) paralysis shouldn't be able to be insta-checked, but it puts herb balance off anyway, so no huge loss
p) do lots of smoking with a tempered phlegmatic and watch what happens.
m) still an extra herb stack and stupidity has the wonderful side effect of messing people up anyway
c) I would think the strip-deaf would be hidden too, so not sure what you mean, but choleric has the benefit of giving cures a chance of failing

I can't remember if blind truewracks or specific affliction pairs are faster, but either way. If they spend all their time curing afflictions instead of fluid level, you've still got your reave. But with decent luck between choleric/phlegmatic's effects, I still imagine they wouldn't last horribly long.

Sena

Xith said:

c) I would think the strip-deaf would be hidden too, so not sure what you mean, but choleric has the benefit of giving cures a chance of failing

Deafness shows up in your prompt. There's no way to hide that without blackout.

Xith said:

I can't remember if blind truewracks or specific affliction pairs are faster

Last I tested it, truewrack balance is the same whether you specify the afflictions or not. For single wracks, random afflictions are 0.5s slower.

Xith

Sena said:

Deafness shows up in your prompt. There's no way to hide that without blackout.

So that and the silly jump-check paralysis problem need to be fixed. Nobody is scared of affliction classes or illusions anymore because curing systems beat the game.

Iocun

I wasn't commentingon whether truewracking is useful or not. All I was saying is that the selections of possible afflictions make the fact that they're hidden much less useful than it might be. Even shamans suffer from that problem, but with alchemists it's just even more pronounced.

Whether an alchemist is truly able to lock someone with decent curing who isn't just standing still, simply by overloading others with afflictions, is something I'll first have to see before I believe it. Overloading people with afflictions isn't really a viable locking strategy anymore, no matter the class.

Tanris

Blademaster is one of the best classes in the game for just about everything excluding ranged.
There one v one is outstanding (easily one of the best in regards to options and mechanically deadly strategies), their survivability in groups and raids is actually extremely high (product of evade and super tanking in mir), their melee potential is probably only equalled by a compitent kai monk with kai, and their utility for group fights is decent too (evade + annihilate, voidfist (broken), icefist, etc). Some of the best hunting on the game too since they can go for a very long time without stopping and dish out higher than average crits.

Alchemist is good one v one, terrible in teams, and decent at hunting. I disagree that your survivability in groups will be higher as alchemist: evade vastly outweighs any form of flat damage mitigation or higher health sip in that regard. Alchemist is not an affliction class though, really. While the design is neat, in practice alchemist affliction potential is inferior to all similar lock based classes and a good system shouldn't ever have issues handling one. They're far more a bleed stacking class, which they do very well.

Tilly

What does Damnation look like?

Iocun

Tilly said:

What does Damnation look like?

Like this:

Achilles bows his head and, in a gesture of righteous indignation, utters a holy curse upon Trey's name. Trey throws back his head with a scream of futile defiance as sacred flames engulf his body. The holy inferno dies as quickly as it came, leaving behind only a gruesome, charred reminder of the heretic that once stood there.

Achilles

Haha thanks I dont think ive seen it from a third person point of view.

Rovelda

Tilly, my inexpert opinion is that all here talk of classes considering we have several skills transcended, a good system and experience to know how to fight.

Meanwhile, we just need to take it easy and do what we enjoy. I personally suck as a Blademaster, but it is good enough for me to have fun with some silly things (like drawing my sword). But the skills...a rune warden smaller than me will parry any of my attacks.

Trey

Iocun said:

Tilly said:

What does Damnation look like?

Like this:

Achilles bows his head and, in a gesture of righteous indignation, utters a holy curse upon Trey's name. Trey throws back his head with a scream of futile defiance as sacred flames engulf his body. The holy inferno dies as quickly as it came, leaving behind only a gruesome, charred reminder of the heretic that once stood there.

Still not sexier than vivisect.

Achilles

Or as easy. Damnation is such a prude

Trey

Damnation is not -quite- as easy, but it's a damn sight easier than most make it out to be.

Also, in our second bout when I nailed you with vivisect, you could have avoided it very easily considering how I set you up.

Achilles

SVO kept eating my tree balance for no reason.

and no, vivisect is wayyyyy easier and a transition to either dsb or cleave, damnation requires a ton of luck and a ridiculous amount of momentum and no real transition to dsb.

Cooper

Trey said:

Damnation is not -quite- as easy, but it's a damn sight easier than most make it out to be. Also, in our second bout when I nailed you with vivisect, you could have avoided it very easily considering how I set you up.

Post-traits, Damnation is impossible as long as your opponent pre-outrifts. If they don't pre-outrift, it comes down to having huge speed rapiers and getting lucky on what afflictions focus cures. You don't need any sort of special curing that opens you up to other strategies like perfect vivisect does.