Opinions on Jester for a retiree to Achaea and in general

Mizuha

Hello!

First off I want to definitely thank @Dunn @Morthif @Hirst and some others for answering my questions in the newbie/ooc question clan and have been very patient with my questions throughout their wars. I do, though, want some opinions in regards to the Jester class. I've heard a great deal of varying opinions about the class as a whole, and while I could admit not being scared off of the class I would probably be lying. 

I love the flavour and idea of Jester. Being a discount Harlene or Joker is cool, and no one is forcing me to ride a giraffe. I could be a very serious Jester with a nail protruding beat stick that violently baps people on their noses! 

But while the flavour and RP of Jester is nice, I do have an interest in coding the 1v1 aspects for what its worth. I'm 100% going to take part in groups and have heard pretty terrible things about Jester in both fields.

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Group Jester:

CONS:
Is worse than Shaman because Shaman can afflict with curses, and rez with their puppets.
Will primarily be a bomber in line of sight fights, but everyone else can bomb too.
   + Also you will be violently targetted if people notice you bombing.
Your melee is limited to hangedman and aeon alternating, because bop and jack in the box are pretty useless.
The lack of assist experience and the lack of kill pressure means you will likely always be losing experience in fights.
Your room hinder hits everyone. Peels and rubble dont really offer anything constructive.
Your only form of raze can hurt your allies (in the one in one hundred chance)
The cost to fund commodities for bombs, cards for tarots, and commodities for puppets is hard on a newbie. (I am level 61 right now)
You are really squishy and people grudge against Jesters.

PROS:
Empress, Fool, Priestess, Magician are all pretty good to use on allies.
Star replaces a need for a bow and meteor arrows.
Somersault is a life saver.
Your bombs wont fizzle.
You can arrow catch.



Single Combat Jester:

CONS:
No one wants to fight a (good) Jester.
Everyone wants to pick on (a bad) Jester.
Fashioning is boring and very slow.
The combat is very gimmicky.
The best way to combat is juggle throw, aeon tarot, suicide mouse. (Con?) This is stopped by shield and can use up your three mice. 
The code ceiling is stupidly high.
There are no Jester mains. Anyone who pocket Jesters doesnt tend to linger as one and only uses it to make bombs.
Timers on bombs can mess up your set ups and waste a bomb.
If you go fashion route anyone who is smart will non stop diagnose until you re-enter room.
If you aren't good enough at the juggling route your endurance will flatline or people will get bored of 'Shield Touch Sim 2018'

PROS:
The combat is very gimmicky.
The best way to combat is juggle throw, aeon tarot, suicide mouse. (Pro?)
You have some of the fastest affliction burst in the game done right.
Jumping someone can be incredibly fast and efficient.
Proper management of both puppetry and pranks can result in unstoppable (?) kills.
Death Tarot is pretty funny.


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Please keep in mind I am very new to Jester, and am only level 61 so far. I am not tri trans, I am not even Logosian, I have just been asking about Jester because I'm a retiree. 

These are only the things I have heard, and I have not put my retirement credits or the no-brainer lessons and credits into Jester yet. Apparently this class is a newbie killer, and can become incredibly demotivating, and until the class is updated it's not a great first class?

I know people will always say 'Go whatever class you want to be, and <cityname here> will make it work when you raid with them.' And I do want to be Jester, and I do think it'd be cool for Ashtan to have their own battle Jester whenever I can manage to gain some levels, but I just feel like maybe it's a bad move to invest into Jester right now and maybe I should play another class until I'm dragon?

Can anyone confirm? Can anyone add their opinion or add to my list of Pros/Cons that I've recorded? Am I entirely wrong about Jester?

On the brighter side, the RP is cool, the hunting feels pretty decent, and the Savants seem like a great fit for a Jester!

Kiet

Jester isn't 'bad' but the issue is that shaman does everything it can do in 1v1 better, and depthswalker took its one niche in group fights (non-occultist aeon ent) after hangedman got heavily nerfed. Bombs allow you some unique things, of course, and juggling does let you burst, but it doesn't really make up for not having curses.

Mizik

No kills in group fights. Their only damage source is Puppet Throttle, which you should never be using. 

It's the alpha support class, but mainly becauseof tarot, which Occultist also has and they're amazing. Notable exception were Puppet Summon/Travel, which Shaman also has. (Nerfed to respect monolith?)

The single best group offensive ability for Jester is Mickey which is finite and costs gold for some reason, but Serpent does so much better with scytherus.

Solnir

Jester is only good as a support, and opponent demoralizer. Fighting jesters is annoying enough that a lot of people won't even bother 1v1ing you.

Farrah

I'd agree that Shaman is probably better at 1v1 (though not necessarily in every way) and Occultist is better in group combat, and that you won't really get kills in group combat as a Jester, so if any of those are deal breakers, don't bother.

On the flip side, though, I'd never complain about having a Jester on my team in a group fight. It can definitely pull its own weight. You have puppet leech for extra makeup xp if you have allies who hunt a lot and are willing to let you leech and once you're Dragon xp and xp loss are inconsequential and you really won't have to worry about it. So unless you're competitive about kill-death ratio Jester shouldn't be too bad in group once you make Dragon.

Jester 1v1 is also absolutely viable if you want to do it. It does have the cons of potentially being really annoying to fight against and higher scripting burden/complexity if those are deal breakers for you, but it isn't a class where if you're fine with these things I'd say "Never play that class" because it's quite strong in both group and 1v1 regardless. Personally, I do find Puppetry boring, so it does somewhat depend on your preference.

Sobriquet

As an active Jester I agree with the above posts. We are a great support class but I'm tempted to switch to occultist to have Tarot plus an offense in groups. Axes are good for quick locks with a competent partner, bombs of course and Mickey. Throttle has worked a few times for me as you only need one fashion, problem is that in group fights you are better off doing anything else. 

The more I've played it recently the more I realise the fashion mechanic is horribly outdated, just hoping Gallowshumour will change that although getting fed up waiting. 

Just please don't change the flavour, I love Jesters. 

Jinos

As an investment Occultist and Shaman would be the better choices. 

Jester is a lot fun, but you'll pull your hair out and sob in a corner on the days when everything just goes wrong, because of a slight error in time that crumbles what you've prepped or planned.

Plus you don't need the jester class to portray a jester character.

Kiet

Jester used to be one of my favorite classes, and they can still do a lot of what they used to do before. The issue imo is that everything else has gotten buffed since then and they've... not really.

Fashioning used to be something fun because it took forever but it also lasted a long time. Obviously that led to griefiness but it also meant that you were ready for the next fight if you didn't use up all your fashions. It was more like having truenames and shadows (except stronger obv) rather than prepping limbs.

The minute they made fashions decay as fast as they do now without actually making it any easier to get them for jesters is when they started their decline, imo. Sure, they got by on bomb tricks and juggling, too, but that was like only half the class and a lot of that got nerfed hard.

Shaman got to make up for it by being able to fashion much faster and for having a more consistently solid offense both with and without fashions. Neither class needs fashions to pk a random guy you outskill by a lot, but shaman's a lot more dangerous without the doll and can get the doll in half the time when it needs it. They've also gotten a lot of new toys in vodun and spiritlore and curse interaction, and jester really hasn't.

It used to be that jester was one of the most uniquely powerful classes in that it offered a million strats back in the day when most classes were way simpler and had less options. These days, though, a vast majority of classes offer a lot of offensive options, and shaman being one of the most varied competes directly with jester.

I agree with Farrah that it's not like it's 'bad' to have one in a group, but most classes aren't outright bad to have. It's just that if someone asked me if they should swap between jester and depthswalker if they multiclassed I'm almost always going to say depthswalker (which, to be fair, happens with most classes, so that might be more a DW issue).

Nazihk

Farrah said:

On the flip side, though, I'd never complain about having a Jester on my team in a group fight. I

She's not going to complain, but she is going to make you spam aeon all fight long so you might as well just be a Depthswalker.

Calira

Jester is by far my favorite class. It's truly unique in how it allows for and rewards creativity, and prep options - even slow ones - on a defensively oriented class is always going to be viable. That said, @Kiet is right in that a lot of other classes have become more streamlined and work towards their specific kills much faster and more efficiently than Jester ever can with its broader, less focused toolset, and they do so while having greater innate hinder and stronger reactive defensive tools, where Jester mostly relies on strong proactive tools that can't be used once locked or proned. I'm confident that Jester is a perfectly capable class in 1v1 and one of the best support classes in teams, but I'm also confident that the skill requirement for mere competency is greater than it is for any other class, and the margin for error is far less forgiving.

Minifie

If you want the RP of jester, you can pick shaman and change up any “harmless” pranks into cursing for fun, or perhaps a jester in his youth turned to more “shamanistic” arts later based on (factional choice) playing an integral part in later life.

class wise I’d go shaman >>>> dwalker for factions that don’t allow occie, and occie > shaman >>>>> dwalker. All three classes have solid 1v1 routes, great group utility and low barrier to entry costs (occie may be most expensive since you want 16 int softcap if my information is correct, @calira can confirm).

personally, class 1 is always my RP class, while I make use of others, minifie is a damned necromancer knight, her falcon the only vestige of her past life, so i equally balance class fun and mechanics, but YMMV.

Calira

17 is the int cap, but the per-point difference is not large. I didn't feel at all handicapped playing it at 16 int, and I would wager 15 is also fine.

[Deleted User]

Minifie said:

class wise I’d go shaman >>>> dwalker for factions that don’t allow occie, and occie > shaman >>>>> dwalker. All three classes have solid 1v1 routes, great group utility and low barrier to entry costs (occie may be most expensive since you want 16 int softcap if my information is correct, @calira can confirm).

personally, class 1 is always my RP class, while I make use of others, minifie is a damned necromancer knight, her falcon the only vestige of her past life, so i equally balance class fun and mechanics, but YMMV.

If combat is your aim uh. Both of those classes listed are better than Occie. Just sayin'

That said Occie is still good, but it's def not better than either of those 2.

If hunting is put into the equation as well, I'd go Shaman... Fuck Depthswalker if you don't have Dragon already to hunt with.

Maux

As a person who went Jester very recently and had Jester before over the years.. as well as most classes. Jester sucks right now pretty hard honestly. People can argue all day that jester is viable because of this and that, but at the end of the day.. just because something is doable doesn't make it good. I mean hell, I could drink the water out of my toilet, but it doesn't make it a good idea.

1v1 it's pitiful really. It has various tricks it can pull out which are gimmicky and will fail on most people in the know, a fast route with daggers that is easily stopped by touching shield with little recourse for the Jester, and a slower route using puppetry which is so slow you're likely to get prepped and killed before you get very far with fashioning, and if you survive are really close to being prepped again.

Group.. still good support as always.

I wouldn't invest into Jester if you're starting out and don't particularly have any sentiments with the class until it gets some TLC or if you feel like holding out for that TLC. Save yourself some headache, especially being new to Achaea.. a lot of things can go wrong with Jester and make you think you suck when it's really just Jester being difficult. I'd not really ever recommend it to a newcomer.

Torinn

Play the class because you like it for its theme/appearance/abilities/whatever.  Not because it's good or sucky at combat.  That's what classleads are for.

Dominius

Wanted to leave my 2 cents as having been Jester until very recently. My experience:
Downside: You need to be able to code WELL to get into serious 1v1
Upkeeping all your tarot and pranks and puppet stuff is EXPENSIVE, especially because axes and daggers drcay, so do venom vials
Puppetry is hard to learn how to implement because you have to hit and run a lot
Suicidemice are tricky to figure out, so is bomb timing 

Upside:
Bashing is good
Great for group combat, really so
Super fast affliction rate with nimble trait, enough to lock easily it's just super hard to code because you throw so fast affliction tracking can't keep up the speed and so you double hit a lot
Fun skills, lots of variety, lots of crazy

If I wasn't such a bad coder on limited game time I would have stuck it out. 

Maux

I wouldn't say you have to be a superb coder to play Jester 1v1 and shouldn't really ever be factor in my opinion. I think if one must code an automated offense to micromanage things down to the milisecond then it's broken and not humanly playable given mortal response times. That said though, I've not ever encountered a class that was unmanageable without mad coding skills. They do a really good job here with the pvp system, truly. Just lots on the plate and Jester kinda feels overdue for some changes is all.

Cooper

The amount you have to code for Jester is being enormously overstated here. When people say Jester needs immense coding, it is probably because they don't understand combat very well.

[Deleted User]

Cooper said:

The amount you have to code for Jester is being enormously overstated here. When people say Jester needs immense coding, it is probably because they don't understand combat very well.

I mean you still have people who're adamant Sentinel requires a butt load of coding with "entity management being soooo hard!" and completely ignoring the fact that with entities you really only cycle between like three.

I think a lot of people just try and use it as a crutch to get the class buffed / changed in a way that lets them put lower amounts of effort in -(see: some of the recent classleads)- and still be able to kill people.

Sobriquet

Agreed with Cooper. If I can code something for Jester then anyone can. Tarot, puppetry etc is simple. Managing bombs is trickier if you are looking to time a lot all at once but Armali coded me something on the fly within about 30 seconds. Axes can be awkward if you envenom on the fly purely due to the quick balance times and human reactions. Coding anything can be as easy or as complex as you want it to be. The problem with Jester isn' Coding, the problem with Jester is it' been left behind in the dust with no love because nobody of any note actually plays it, because as Kiet said, those of note has numerous better options. 

The only person I see who lauds Jester as arguably the best class doesn't fight, doesn't participate in raids and appears to go purely on theory. I respect that person's theory knowledge massively but it's very different to fighting with it 24/7. 

Armali

They could probably kick your ass with it too, if we're going to be honest.

Sobriquet

90% of Achaea can with 100% of classes, if we're going to be honest. 

Kiet

There's no class in achaea right now that can't get consistent 1v1 wins, tbh. We have generally good class balance right now in that sense, and really you can excel at any class without having to massively outdo your opponent. When we say Jester isn't great we mean more that there's no reason to play it over any other class that's all that compelling.

It's not like there's not a bunch of extremely good fighters fighting that it sucks, and that they're somehow all missing the class's potential. It's just that that potential isn't particularly higher than most of the other classes.

Nazihk

Here's the biggest problem with Jester.

The flavor is terrible. Banana peels for movement hinder,goddamn balloons for mobility, bopping things to death, fishing for mice with cheese on a string, a shieldbreaker that's "lol I tell a joke so bad they have to hit me". It's awful.

It doesn't matter if you think you can be a badass joker with a nailbat, everybody is going to see you as a stupid clown bopping things on the head.

And everybody hates clowns.

Maux

Nazihk said:

Here's the biggest problem with Jester.

The flavor is terrible. Banana peels for movement hinder,goddamn balloons for mobility, bopping things to death, fishing for mice with cheese on a string, a shieldbreaker that's "lol I tell a joke so bad they have to hit me". It's awful.

It doesn't matter if you think you can be a badass joker with a nailbat, everybody is going to see you as a stupid clown bopping things on the head.

And everybody hates clowns.

lol I think i read you complaining about the flavor ages back, but Jester isn't for everyone. Though the beauty of an RP oriented game is you can be whatever you wish to be. I personally like the flavor being whimsical like that and kinda abhor Joker/Harley clones. It's what you make of it I suppose.

Mizik

Kiet said:

There's no class in achaea right now that can't get consistent 1v1 wins, tbh. We have generally good class balance right now in that sense, and really you can excel at any class without having to massively outdo your opponent. When we say Jester isn't great we mean more that there's no reason to play it over any other class that's all that compelling.

It's not like there's not a bunch of extremely good fighters fighting that it sucks, and that they're somehow all missing the class's potential. It's just that that potential isn't particularly higher than most of the other classes.

Yooo class tier thread

And @Nazihk same reason Mizik can't be a Bard. Or Penwize. Epeen > damage.

Calira

Nazihk said:

It doesn't matter if you think you can be a badass joker with a nailbat, everybody is going to see you as a stupid clown bopping things on the head.

And everybody hates clowns.

In a game where basically every other class is some badass grimdark murder god, it can actually be appealing to just be a stupid clown sometimes. I'd take the flavour of Jester or Bard over Depthswalker or Infernal any day

Nazihk

Bard is fine, but Jester is a constant feel of breaking the setting, what with the fucking balloon giraffes and everything.

Calira

I understand disliking them, but I don't buy the argument that they break the setting. Achaea is a high-fantasy setting where literally every adventurer utilizes supernatural or magical powers. It doesn't break the setting for a handful of idiots to squander magical talent on making improbable balloon animals.

Cailin

I mean, we have Bopalopia, the Duckie Wheel, Kamleikan, and multitudes of other light-hearted and funny things in Achaea. Achaea is a rich and varied world for people who have lots of different tastes, ranging from light to dark and a host of other options besides. That's one of the things that makes Achaea so great. If we all wanted only dark, we'd be playing Aetolia.

Minifie

Jester breaks limbs with puppets, not immersion.