My impression of all the classes

[Paladin Sponge]

Hi all. If you're reading this, you may have seen me around the forums recently. At any rate, it's a great game and my latest addiction. This post regards my analysis of the four classes having played them all to level 20. This is a fairly subjective review and my opinion will probably change as my avatars mature.

As an aside, I wanna give a shout out to Analogkid. Though I'm not a fanboy by any measure, his guides on the classes gave enough information for me to be able to pick a direction, vastly increasing my enjoyment of the game.

"The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" are how I refer to the skills in the tabs in the skill tree. By good, I mean, invest in this. More than one rank and as often as you can if possible. By bad, I mean one point and leave it alone. By ugly, I mean forget you ever saw it.

Warrior:

In a nutshell: Extremely gear dependent.

Meaning, the higher the damage range on the weapon, the more useful the warrior's skills become. All else is secondary to getting a better weapon.

This class is my personal favorite, just by bias. I like the look, I like the method.

GENERAL NOTES

Most of the gameplay revolves around running into mobs, generating rage, and bashing stuff. I've found this usually results in being surrounded and, if not handled with care, death. This class is somewhat counter-intuitive. If you want your warrior to survive, he needs to be able to kill quickly and efficiently. The only reason I haul around a shield is because it has +regen on it, just so I don't have to port back to heal while exploring.

The only class I can really compare Warriors to is the rogue. Even melee spec priests can't hold a candle to the amount of single target damage a rogue or warrior can put out in close quarters. Warriors, due to the plate armor, have slightly more staying power than a rogue. Rogues, however, win out on survivability by having more outs than a warrior. Get a Warrior into a really tough spot, and it's only a matter of running out of food and potions.

STATS

As far as stats go, I really don't have a plan. I used to increase stats just to use a shiny new pigsticker or something, but now I just quaff a potion to get it on, then leave it there until something better is found. So, current goal is to get 'em all to 50. Just because. Though I'm partial to STR, VIT, and DEX or INT for the attack or crit chance.

OFFENSE

-The Good:

Crush, being spammable, is my weapon of choice. It doesn't matter that it does less +physical damage% than power strike for the points invested. This is due to the gear dependency issue. With enough rage, the amount of damage that can be poured out is tremendous.

The only other offensive skill on my toolbar is whirlwind. Although cleave is more effective per skill point, it blows 16 points of rage to whirlwind's 10 to hit the same 4 mobs. This becomes important when completely surrounded by trash mobs and spamming crush. By surrounded, I mean roughly 1/3 of the screen or more is covered by the little bastards and the spawn machine is just out of reach.

-The Bad:

I'm debating on getting rid of crushing blow and bleed entirely. Though they are nice when they proc, both scaling with your gear, I don't see them firing off enough. From what I understand of the mechanics, having a +100% chance of crushing blow or deep wounds only results in a paltry 10% or so of actual chance of seeing it happen. Those points can be better used elsewhere.

-And the Ugly:

A lot of the attack skills are fairly useless. I've stopped using power strike entirely.

FOCUS

-The Good:

There are none.

-The Bad:

Most of the Focus skills can be safely disregarded. Precision is nice, and though I've never had a problem hitting mobs, a little extra doesn't hurt. The focus skills, specifically rage, are okay. I use it because it's just a buff. 3 points equate to using crush 10% more often.

-And the Ugly:

Everything else.

DEFENSE

The Good:

Plate is good. All my characters find pieces of plate armor, but only one can use them.

The Bad:

Quick temper is alright. Having too much rage is a high-quality problem when playing a warrior. I picked up retaliation for the same reason: to generate rage so I can spam crush.

The Ugly:

Shield mastery turned out to be of limited use. Because of the mechanics of the class, a two-handed weapon keeps me alive much more than a shield. Unless I can find a one-hander with an excellent damage range, shields are good for my chest-opening kit and not much else.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

My biggest expense for a warrior is keeping him fed. With the plate armor, his damage mitigation is excellent, thus I rarely use potions. The lack of range attack is annoying. There are times in zone where I'll walk into five or six breeding deaths and, although killing the little guys they spawn isn't a problem, not being able to touch the spawners sucks. The only effective strategy I've found for dealing with them involves chasing them and killing them. At this point, I've usually got quite the train behind me. And this is where the fun begins.