Help me choose a class, wise ones!

Sanna

I'm thinking about returning to Achaea after a year or so and would love some advice on the class I choose. I tend to get invested in my characters emotionally and I'd prefer not to regret my class choice. I'll probably spend enough to tri-trans but not be buying any artefacts. I'd like something with a high skillcap mostly because I enjoy theory crafting.

1) DWB Infernal
I like the idea of playing around the two instakills. The possibility of damaging somebody out does not excite me. If I could turn off the damage I would, I find winning that way boring.

2) Occultist
Never tried this class and it seems interesting with the unique progression of afflictions.

3) Sylvan 
The new weatherweaving skill is pretty cool and seems to have quite a few options.

4) Jester/Shaman
Puppetry is awesome. I have zero coding skill, are both of them still viable?

Any thoughts on what might be the most fun at the moment would be appreciated!

Endrek

I'll talk Occultist for a little bit. I may be slightly dated here, but this is a gist:

1. You get the most fast travel. Universe gets you around Sapience proper, Hermit takes you back to a nice hidey-hole somewhere. Xenophage will get you out of the wilderness anywhere--even on distant islands.

2. You also get a decent number of panic buttons. Astralform gets you into/out of places, Pathfinder is a very good panic button, and if push comes to shove, call for help on CT and Empress in a few of your friends for backup.

Combat-wise, Occultists are scary. You have some of the fastest afflicting in the game, you have raid utility in spades, you can hinder at the cost of your own momentum, and you'll make your allies very happy if you can be a good Hangedman/Tentacles ent.

However, all of this comes at a few costs:

1. You are going to be squishy if you want to kill anything. You'll need as much intelligence as you can get in order to kill things, which means you'll have minimal tank. You get scale mail, a cavalry shield, and Simulacrum, which is a flat damage reduction that will wear out. You can run away really well, and you can tank sustained moderate damage through Priestess, but if you get focused by anything, you'll pop. Unfortunately for you, Occultists are typically the first targets in groups because A: you pop and B: you're so much of a force multiplier through all of that utility.

2. Your offense does little hindering pre-Cadmus. You don't get paralysis, only lethargy/clumsiness. Post-Cadmus, it gets slightly better, but you'll never have the luxury of slowing your opponent's offense like Shaman/Apostate/Serpent can.

3. Your offense has a significant portion of RNG associated with it: Your only control over what your entities afflict with is what your opponent already has. Unnameable hits with 1 to 3 masked mental afflictions. Tentacles has an appreciably lower proc rate for hindering movement (due to the fact that it moves with you as opposed to just staying there like Gravehands/Piety). You can work around this, but you'll always have to consider it.

4. Between karma/gold for pacts and gold/time for tarot cards, Occultist can get expensive in resources. Also, pacts are simultaneously flavorful and hair-rending, especially in raid situations. Golgotha keeps your entities from being banished--if they're with you. If you send your doppelganger to harass the enemy, it's probably going to get orb'd immediately, which means you have to resummon it, which means it gets rebanished as soon as you send it again, and so on. Running out of karma mid-raid is frustrating, running out of pacts doubly so.

5. Your bashing is mediocre unartied. Slightly better if you get a +3 int/con transmog, but definitely slow. Also, if you plan on doing any real combat, you'll have to go full glass cannon in intelligence anyway.

Xinna

I'd say sylvan and shaman are the most complex and have the highest skillcap, of those you listed. I'd recommend sylvan over shaman but it would limit cities you can play in to Eleusis, if that matters to you.

Coding used to be basically a necessity for shaman. I -think- that's better now (no coding req anymore, that is) but haven't touched it myself so not positive.

Serpent and bard are other good theorycrafter classes with high skill caps.

Drot

I'd recommend shaman. Really wish I would have tougher it out and gotten good at it. Vodun really -is- that cool. Can't say that for any other skill ever. And I've played too many.

Kenway

DwB Infernal probably has the lowest artie returns out of those meaning if youre not planning on getting any, it will perform at nearer its highest potential than the others. DwB is pretty awesomely strong right now and youre absolutely right about the two instakills. Pulp itself is actually quite hard to avoid and thats without vivisect on the table influencing your curing. Could also pull it off with just about zero coding which some people like.

Gror

What did you pick @Sanna?