Interesting to see a video go so in-depth with the classes.
They ranked them on a few things. It's all based ONLY on their starting default skills, because you can learn anything else. To make it easier for discussion, I'll post their rankings on five areas.
- Survivability
- Damage Capability
- Crowd Control
- Effectiveness
- Synergy with Early Companions - Madora (a 2H Fighter), and Jahan (an Enchanter)
They ranked them like this:
1.
Wizard - Great utility from Midnight Oil and Flare. That lets you deal with poison, create your own burning areas, and slow enemies.
2.
Cleric - Strong survivability with the heavy armour and healing. The AoE fire-damage cone is also helpful. They consider the cleric the best early-game melee character.
3.
Ranger - It can escape, it has a multiple-target shot, and the special arrows give it a lot of utility.
4.
Wayfarer - The bow is a good advantage, and the heal makes up for the lack of an escape skill. It's more of a support class than the ranger.
5.
Battlemage - Doesn't play like any other class, has some good crowd-control. A happy medium between other classes, you can take it in any direction you want to.
6.
Fighter - A solid class, but heavy overlap with Madora makes this less useful. With Lone Wolf this would be higher on the list.
7.
Enchanter - Awesome skillset, but heavy overlap with Jahan. Maybe another case for Lone wolf.
8.
Witch - Not bad, it just doesn't do anything great. Better if you're in the market for a support mage.
9.
Shadowblade - Some helpful ranged abilities, but Venomous Strike isn't that useful in Cyseal, it is squishy, and has no escape skill. A tricky class to play with.
10.
Rogue - No ranged abilities, Venomous Strike again, just as squishy. Fast Track is good, but not enough to make up for the shortcomings, and the high cooldowns on Fast Track and Walk in Shadows don't help.
11.
Knight - The Knight doesn't do anything good. It's the Swiss Army Knife of classes, bit not even a good Swiss army knife. The Knight can use Rush to get in, and it does damage, but it has no survivability. Cure Wounds is a very small heal even compared to Minor Heal, so it's not useful. The Encourage buff is nice, but it won't help you survive that well.
****
Personally, I have some quibbles with the way they did the analysis, almost as if this was a single-character-no-party RPG. The emphasis their criteria placed on Survivability and Damage Dealing doesn't take into account your fellow party member.
A better way (even though it would be a lot more time and effort) would be to rank pairs of classes by how well they work together instead of how well one class can do alone.
I also disagree slightly that Jahan makes a second Enchanter in the party redundant. My dual-enchanter run went very well (well, until the Black Cove), because I could chain-stun crowds of enemies and send Lightning-Rod melee fighters in to clear it up.
They also seem to have had trouble landing backstabs, judging by their complaint about the Rogue's poor damage. They can do very well if positioned right, although they could do even better if Guerrilla wasn't broken.
They are right on a lot of things, though.
- Poison damage starting skills are not that useful in Cyseal, and something that I'll spec out of in character creation once that's in.
- The Cleric and Wayfarer are indeed very strong classes, they work together very well.
- The Rogue is indeed very squishy, and you will need to boost its CON a bit to stay alive.
- The Knight's heal spell is indeed essentially worthless compared to the damage enemies can do.
As for my own list, well I could put one together, but that's tricky. I'd have to make my own criteria first.
