Best Glass Cannon/Wizard type class?

Qarax

If I very much enjoyed fulfilling the role of the backline nuker/Direct Damager in combat, would Magi be the best class for this? I know there are several magical based classes in this game and was just curious which one may best suit this role. Thank you.

Austere

For a beginner, I'd recommend magi.  Out of occie, magi,  and monk,  magi is probably the best hunting. Monk int spec bashing is, imo, the cruelest activity in Achaea. Occie isn't entirely bad,  but magi have defenses which scale off int, and generally feels safer to be.  In a raid situation, I'd say all three are relatively equal in damage and utility. Magi definitely loaded with tricks.  

One on one,  outside of an insane investment,  int monk is also going to be the weakest, from my experience.  All can be competitive, but again, I'd rank magi as the easiest to pickup.  

Maseth

To expand on what Kiet said, Achaean classes are less like D&D/WoW and more like Diablo. Instead of a PvE healer/tank/DPS dynamic, everyone will use potions to keep themselves alive, although some people are tankier than others, and a few classes can heal. In PvP, you do have a backline in the form of ranged attacks, but the major DPS will be in the form of "finishers" that do massive damage or outright kill when certain conditions are met. Those finishers are pretty much always melee. To kill with ranged, it seems like you need superior numbers, to drastically out-match your opponent to begin with, or to be reliant on other people doing lots of melee damage.

Aegoth

sadly, magi damage pales in comparison to occultist. If you want to nuke people to oblivion, go occultist

Or monk, bc kai choke does the most damage

Qarax

Monks get the best nukes? Are they not a hand to hand melee class?

Occultist was interesting, but I'm not sure I get the whole Chaos aspect from an RP standpoint.

Solnir

Due to how quick curing is in this game, you're going to be hard pressed to find a class that is a legitimate glass cannon. As Aegoth said, Occie is pretty quick with kills once you have them down, but there really isn't a legit glass cannon here.

Farrah

Are you specifically looking for ranged damage, or just best damage?

Magi has cataclysm, which let's you hit with good damage from a distance and may be what you're looking for. It does require another Magi to use, though, and without it Magi has no other good ranged attack.

Monk is part hand-to-hand, but has Kaido which is more magical in nature. It's a channel of aggressive energies and the monk can use it to choke someone from afar. 

Sylvan is a forest-themed mage and has Grove Lightning, which is a nice ranged attack, in addition to some massive melee nukes. But limited to forestal faction.

None of these are really glass cannons, mind you. They're all pretty tanky classes too.

Telendrieth

Qarax said:

Monks get the best nukes? Are they not a hand to hand melee class?

Monks are an interesting blend of martial, mystic, and mentalist. The skillset of Tekura (or shikudo if you go the whacky staffy route) revolves around melee style combat. The other two skills of Kaido and Telepathy have some ranged options. In Telepathy you can mind lock any adventurer in the area and do some afflicting or radiance them from afar, you can also mind crush as a LoS or in-room attack. Kaido allows you to expend generated Kai to do some nasty stuff, like Darth Vader force choking people from LoS, breaking all of their limbs and a few other neat things.

Iakimen

Back-line spellcasting nuker? Occultist and Monk as suggested (int spec with quick-witted obviously the best for this). Sylvan is fantastic and sorely underused. Artied Magi groups looping staffcasts where cataclysm is available is hilariously effective, especially on bulk noobs (everyone), and successful holocaust spam is one of the greatest rushes in the game. There are other  "spell-casting" classes that can offer situational bursts depending on class combinations and certain other factors, but these are the best for your buck for mostly unconditional, sustained, high dps (the first 3 more so than Magi).

I'd suggest Sylvan because it is barely played and is 100% going to generate more rage than the other classes. Grab arties or your ability to make people rant about you will be almost non-existent and primarily from idiots who don't know how to stack resists (slight exaggeration). 

I disagree partially with Solnir's comment. Alleviating the "glass cannon" nature of some classes depends far more on utilizing defensive options properly than the advance of curing, imo. It's always been like this, but it has been exacerbated by the significant number of defensive options that can be accessed outside of class skills due to promotions over the past few years. But yes, nonetheless, with smart play and credit investment to access more defensive options, you can increase the tankability of some of the "squisher" classes significantly. 

I hope you have a lot of credits. Direct damage classes tend to involve the most credit investment for scaling their offense.

Farrah

Idk. If I'm bard or serpent, there are things I can't survive, even with arties (at least once like, reflect wand is used up, if I use that). They're also quick offense classes that can kill before they get killed. I'd say those are moreso the glass cannons of Achaea.

But I assume OP is looking more for the backline nuke part than the "being made of glass" part. Most damage classes aren't squishy in Achaea. It's aff classes that can be squishy.

Lucianus

Depthswalker with Bahar is not bad. Three room LoS in outdoors environment.

Qarax

Farrah said:

Are you specifically looking for ranged damage, or just best damage?

Best, I just figured a damager would be squishier and require some sort of meatshield or a tank class up front. I would prefer a class that tries to kill an enemy with outright damage as quickly as possible rather than an affliction class.

The Sylvan sounds interesting, I'm not sure about the nature based part. But they would require a large cash investment to be good? Sylvans and Occultists both fight like I've described above?

Ahmet

Arash BM is pretty glass cannon-y.

Antonius

Qarax said:

Farrah said:

Are you specifically looking for ranged damage, or just best damage?

Best, I just figured a damager would be squishier and require some sort of meatshield or a tank class up front. I would prefer a class that tries to kill an enemy with outright damage as quickly as possible rather than an affliction class.

The Sylvan sounds interesting, I'm not sure about the nature based part. But they would require a large cash investment to be good? Sylvans and Occultists both fight like I've described above?

Achaea doesn't really have the traditional tank, healer, DPS roles that it sounds like you're used to and expecting to find.

More damage doesn't necessarily mean less tanky, and playing a class that deals a lot of damage doesn't mean you'll die instantly if something so much as looks at you.

Torinn

@Qarax there isn't really that sort of class dynamic here.  All classes have some sort of insta-kill mechanic that is possible after preparing the enemy a certain way.  Might be broken limbs, might be afflictions, whatever.  Raw damage on a Target will seldom kill them unless you're working with others also doing raw damage.  In single.combat where things are a bit better balanced it is definitely a rock-paper-scissors sort of scenario

Qarax

Am I correct in assuming Sylvan and Occultist damage is going to be mostly INT based?

Vallie

Occultist damage is INT based. Additionally, the higher your int (up to 17), the faster your entities regain balance. One of the nice things about Occultist is that any bonuses/arties useful in the affliction strategy is also useful if you're doing pure damage. Occultists don't really require any 'conditions' for their damage - eg. knights/dragons can do heavy damage to an opponent that is prone, magi instantly kill you if you're below a certain health + burning, Shikudo monks can instantly kill you if you're prone + < 50% health. Occie damage is just warp+hounds, and your hound does more damage if they happen to be afflicted - I'm not optimized or anything, but my base damage comes out to around ~35% of max hp at 0 afflictions, which adds up very quickly.

In terms of range, you have access to meteors, and can have your doppleganger warp people from a safe distance. Less potent than your melee damage, but definitely contributes. Additionally, if you get someone's corpse, you can extract truenames from it - if you truename someone, you're looking at ~40% damage, and giving them aeon (all commands have a 1s delay) through the quicksilver defense, which can pretty much doom anyone in a group.

Occies have a ton of utility, are decently tanky against most things other than physical damage, and you can use the Orb entity to give yourself a big defensive boost for ~1 minute. You do gain the benefit of being able to choose from a variety of escaping - Hermit tarot away, pathfinder away, touch universe map away, astralwind away, chariot fly away, etc.

Kiet

There really isn't a glass cannon damage class in Achaea, in the sense that there's no ability to tank, to be in the backlines, or anything else like that. You're also not going to beat anyone good in pvp with just damage and nothing else (even 2h/dwb which do a lot of damage need to do something other than damage to prevent people from just walking away).

Everyone here is also assuming you mean pvp, because in pve most of the classes do similarish dps with some outliers.

I would honestly find some other way to pick a class in Achaea, because what you're looking for doesn't really exist.

Kogan

Lucianus said:

Depthswalker with Bahar is not bad. Three room LoS in outdoors environment.

This. Also if you have a bow it can be combined with shoot. If I remember correctly in testing with Dochitha bahar/shoot with lvl 3 bow is ~36%. Another thing you can do if not in room hinder is something like... e/intone bahar/west/mutilate for 58% damage in one eqbal.

Exelethril

If you don't plan on 1vs1ing and just want to nuke from the sidelines, quick-witted INT monk with diadem is pretty good.

Farrah

Kogan said:

Lucianus said:

Depthswalker with Bahar is not bad. Three room LoS in outdoors environment.

This. Also if you have a bow it can be combined with shoot. If I remember correctly in testing with Dochitha bahar/shoot with lvl 3 bow is ~36%. Another thing you can do if not in room hinder is something like... e/intone bahar/west/mutilate for 58% damage in one eqbal.

You guys are ignoring the fact that Bahar is only usable once every 10(?) seconds and does crap damage on it's own. It's not remotely good DPS or a nuke.

Depthswalker Mutilate is a good melee nuke though. But it does require minor afflicting first to get their shadow.

Kogan

Farrah said:

You guys are ignoring the fact that Bahar is only usable once every 10(?) seconds and does crap damage on it's own. It's not remotely good DPS or a nuke.

Depthswalker Mutilate is a good melee nuke though. But it does require minor afflicting first to get their shadow.

Sure, but I was assuming they would get a bow as well though to have shoots in between bahars(bahar/shoots). Bahar is 15% I believe. Would not recommend at all if you have no bow. There are definitely better LoS classes that do not require a level 3 bow just to have 36% every 10 seconds and 21% every other shoot. However I think to draw 36% out of a single kai choke you're also looking at grook with collar and at least +2 int? However I dont think its 21% bad with no artifacts? Maybe around 30% if just int spec?

Farrah

Kogan said:

Farrah said:

You guys are ignoring the fact that Bahar is only usable once every 10(?) seconds and does crap damage on it's own. It's not remotely good DPS or a nuke.

Depthswalker Mutilate is a good melee nuke though. But it does require minor afflicting first to get their shadow.

Sure, but I was assuming they would get a bow as well though to have shoots in between bahars(bahar/shoots). Bahar is 15% I believe. Would not recommend at all if you have no bow. There are definitely better LoS classes that do not require a level 3 bow just to have 36% every 10 seconds and 21% every other shoot. However I think to draw 36% out of a single kai choke you're also looking at grook with collar and at least +2 int? However I dont think its 21% bad with no artifacts? Maybe around 30% if just int spec?

A serpent with a lvl 3 bow will have far better dps than a depthswalker with a lvl 3 bow (due to accuracy), and for cheaper (don't have to pay 500 cr for shoot command), and without having to be outdoors. It's just not remotely close to a best ranged attack or best damage attack.

Telendrieth

Kogan said:

Sure, but I was assuming they would get a bow as well though to have shoots in between bahars(bahar/shoots). Bahar is 15% I believe. Would not recommend at all if you have no bow. There are definitely better LoS classes that do not require a level 3 bow just to have 36% every 10 seconds and 21% every other shoot. However I think to draw 36% out of a single kai choke you're also looking at grook with collar and at least +2 int? However I dont think its 21% bad with no artifacts? Maybe around 30% if just int spec?

Telling people my stats is rude. :P

Farrah said:

A serpent with a lvl 3 bow will have far better dps than a depthswalker with a lvl 3 bow (due to accuracy), and for cheaper (don't have to pay 500 cr for shoot command), and without having to be outdoors. It's just not remotely close to a best ranged attack or best damage attack.

I'm just waiting for them to further chop serpent into artes and we get a sniping scope to attach to bows/crossbows. I mean, we pretty much only have phase and snipe left to steal.

Krypton

Definitely classleading Druid/Sentinel to get Phasehound Morph this round.