Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Comparing the classes

oof, so I've put 40 hours into this game already. Have rolled all the classes on a MC now. Between that, using my companions and different subclasses, thought I share my experience and feedback with them.

Ranger(Beast Master)- My first character and who I really wanted to enjoyed, but was actually lacking. They're bit of a hybrid character so they shouldn't be best at something, I get that. The pets obviously need some balancing. Bear is so squishy while Giant Spider has high health, armor, damage, and cc. What I'd really like to see added is more interaction with my companion, like petting, "who's a good goblin melting spider? you are!", tossing a treat, or at least being able to name them. A pet heal that doesn't cost a spell slot and a pet revivify that does could be nice too. Make the pet feel more of a companion. Be nice if bear and spider could climb and use ladders as well.

Rogue- oh ho ho ho, wood elf rogue gets so many skills! I really like the big damage numbers with the thief, running across the battlefield as a shadow of death, but you are pretty much a one trick pony that just does sneak attack over and over. I rather have the extra toolkit of spells, "hello firebolt and magic missile", from arcane trickster than the dash stab hide combo. Pretty much any class that has magic missile is superior imo. I wish rogues were more masters of stealth though. Everyone seems too good at hiding. Maybe make some sight cone differences between rogue/non-rogue and Hide should be a full action for other classes and bonus action for rogue.

Cleric- This was definitely the most frustrating class for me. A lot of their spells require concentration. I'd typically override one of my spells with another and I wish there was a UI warning for that. Other times an enemy would hit me and that breaks concentration too. If I had a nickle for every time sacred flame or guiding bolt hit, I would have 2 nickles. The one useful thing on my clerics would be that long range bonus action heal, that's great for helping downed party members. Otherwise, healing spells don't really heal that much and I could just use potions or food that I have plenty of.

Wizard- A lot more fun than I was expecting. Spell slots didn't bog me down as much as I thought they would. I was still getting a lot done before having to long rest. It helps with how powerful firebolt and ray of frost are. Even when they miss, the surface effect still hits. Others have mentioned them being able to learn any spell which will probably be patched. You should also patch the ogre crown that sets your INT to 18. Maybe just have it be a flat +4 or +2 before power gamers start going after it with 8 INT wizards. So I think nerfing the cantrips and their surfaces would be fine. Maybe make other spells more likely to hit so Magic Missile isn't such a god send.

Fighter- Similar to rogue with the big damage numbers, but less hidey and more tanky this time. More strength for those sweet sweet shove kills is nice. Shoving people off cliffs is one my favorite feature in the game so far. Once the battle master subclass actually works(i.e. dice tracking and Riposte), I think it'll be just fun as Eldritch knight. I like the weapon specific actions we get now and maybe the fighter class can use those more than other classes. I'm in favor of bending d&d rules to provide more fun and versatility to classes.

Warlock- The edgy wizard. Plays pretty similar to wizard, but trades freedom of lots of spell slots for eldritch blast which is nice, but doesn't compete with rogue or rangers on damage, unless you get the evocation to turn it into a long range shove. Then there's the imp which helps balance their damage and the evocations. False life is useful and Many Faces could be very handy for Drow and Tieflings. I feel like this class is the most fair and doesn't really need tweaking. Maybe having 2 short rests per long rest would be nice.

Dodge is another action you add into the mix to help with having more options at our disposal. A taunt or distract would be really useful as well. Let's separate jump/disengage or make backstab modifier just be a rogue thing so there's less hoping over enemies for the extra hit chance. It looks weird and it didn't work for Anakin, shouldn't work for us. Could have a flanking bonus for having an ally next to your target. Yeah I'd be in favor of removing backstab and threatened bonuses. They're already hard enough to hit, they don't need that extra defense from "threatened" which I never did figure out what triggers that.

It's interesting because I had very different feelings about a lot of the classes. To say it first though, I think they all suffer from the problem of one subclass or configuration being wildly better than the other choices.

Ranger: Solid damage and armor, the summons and spells are meh but who cares because your real job is being a bow warlock. You apply your mark, shoot the badguy, and laugh at the warlock's starting ac.

Rogue: Thief is incredible, I'd even argue that in the current content is the outright best for combat as long as you're level three (and your should be with how easy it is to hit). Their action econpmy is splendid, sneak attacks are ready to setup (especially for dark vision races), and their extra bonus action means that they have a solid way to work shove into their turn if needed. Arcane Trickster is... alright too I guess? They have a few helpful spella and True Strike makes setting up long range sneak attacks easy... but so does crouching.

Cleric: Meh... Light can pull off some excellent tankiness and the spells are impactful but you end up constantly resting if you rely on your spells heavily and if you're saving your spells you're basically just a bad fighter. Oh the bright side, eachsubclass can pull off at least one useful gimmick fairly reliably so you have more freedom to make choices based on flavor preference without being handicapped. So far the best use for a Cleric I've found is casting Shield of Faith before going back to camp so I can take someone else.

Wizard: Garbage, it has strong burst but after that's used up you're slinging cantrips for damage. I get that Wizard's supposed to have more cc and utility than many of the other classes but I've yet to find an encounter where the utility was that needed. Down the road as we get new encounters and spells this situation could change but atm the most useful thing to do with a Wizard of to have them cast Mage Armor on somebody else before swapping them out of the party.

Fighter: Battle Master is excellent and honestly I'm not sad that riposte needs work because I never want it. I get the damage value of riposte but Battle Master already does decent damage enough damage considering our tends to be the party tank. The damage+status of scary shot is nice and there isn't much worse to say there, Rally is helpful for buying the team that one extra turn they need to reinforce a struggling companion's position, and push shot is a ranged shove in a game where falling damage often does at least "a lot" of damage.

Warlock: Not bad at all, their defense feels a little light till level 4 when you can feat for some better armor and a shield but they're not softies by any stretch. Blast+Hex+Cha by itself is great from just a damage standpoint but one you add shoving to the blast Warlock becomes indisposable. To top all of this off, imps make great bonus buddies, Scorching Ray gives them decent burst, and Misty Step goes a long way for keeping your Warlock out of trouble (especially if paired with their story power).

Overall: My optimal setup right now is a Thief PC, Thief Astarion, Battle Master Lae'zel, and Fiend Warlock Wyll. You'll still need to rest occasionally but overall you get a team that has a pretty wide range of skills, can dish out a lot of shoves on cliff/ledge fights, you get a very reasonable amount of mobility, decent ac all around (especially at level 4), and you can dish or 6a lot of damage without expanding much in the way of rest reliant resources.

I agree with some, but others not só much, the ones I think I have something relevante to add até:

Cleric: really solid for me, does good damage from soells and can still heal others and some other useful utility. That 4d10 necrotic can be nasty. Maybe you had not super high charisma or Just had bad luck, but my spells were hitting 80~90% chance from advantade and doing a lot of work.

Rogue: thief is too OP, currently avarage damage surpasses lvl. 5 of any other martial class, has no expertise and sneak attack is an action and not a toggle that can be aplied to any attack that qualifies.

Ranger: Agree that the beast companion needs more, lets say, personality, to feel like a companion not a summon, and I believe choosing only one, which you can name and instead of summoning allways follows you around, can be revived, healed, etc. And on death spawns back next long rest. Of course pets needs balance cause spider is just better at pretty much everything

Wizard: You can turn every scroll into a spellbook spell, so go ahead and be that super-healer guy, even better than a cleric. Is this 5e rules or an oversight? Wish I knew.

Pets: Broken. Go send flights of re-summonable pets like your casters are aircraft carriers, keeping them way out of danger until everything is dead.

Rangers: Pet aircraft carriers, with crap martial skills. Good armor though. Good for unusual dialogue and environmental solutions, mine had like 8-9 skill proficiencies to start.

Fighters: Meh, same as they ever were, gear-dependent tanks. Self-heal is kind of dumb, so is rally, I guess 5e fighter is just basically a paladin now.

Rogues: Nice 2h fighter, better than the fighter. Good at chests and traps, pickpocketing, not much better at stealth than anyone else as it stands. Feels more like the OG rogue from old DnD than anything current.

Cleric: Worst class currently, maybe we'll need some major mass-heals later but it seems like there's a fair amount of off-heals from other sources, so maybe not? I think it would be nice not to need a healbot in every party, me, I always prefered the rogue + fighter genre fiction anyway (fafrd/mouser, Egil + Nix)

I have to say I don't love this system, and it's much more on 5e DnD than it is on Larian. That said, their surfaces-system and shove-fu doesn't mesh well with DnD at all IMO. Feels like two competing tactical systems instead of one oevrall balanced system.