Winds
09-07-2009, 11:44 AM
I once tried to search for a proper description of each class, but didn't find any decent ones. Sure the wiki explains what different classes do, but says close to nothing about how it's like to play the classes and how they correspond to others.
We also have many threads discussing (read: complaining) about individual classes. But not such that summarizes them all.
Even though I admit, that I haven't got that much of experience on each and every class, i though I'd try to describe them and hope that others will fill up my holes. My own characters are (in order of creation) Wind's Whisper (hunter), Wind's Call (barbarian) and Wind's Whistle (warlock). I could have access to 50 lvl chars of the other classes too, but for several reasons (main reason being following the rules) I play only these 3. I've played bit more then a year and only on Horus in Syrtis, so that affects my judgement too. I also must say that I'm far from being a good player, so I can't for example say what class wins over another in 1on1, as I've probably lost the each and every class on my chars. So I guess I'm trying to say that this is based on my limited personal experience and is thus no absolute truth.
I try to focus on RvR, because that's what this game is supposed to be about. All though while playing on the desolate server of Horus you easily end up playing a lot on your own and for some classes this game fails badly in that aspect. So enough with the intro...
Barbarian
Pro's: hard hits, good door breaker
Con's: melee range, position bugs, slow, dies fast, low mana
Barbarians are currently annoying to play. In one versus one both archers and staff mastery using mages can keep a melee class out off range for ages with strafing and continue hitting them all the time. Even if you get in range on your screen position bugs may cause you not to hit even a target you have knocked down yourself. In my view it's simply unacceptable that melee classes can die in 1on1 with out landing a single hit, cause the classes that have range to their advantage are also faster. Barbarians should in my opinion be the fastest class on short distance. In bigger fights barbarians role is to watch ranged fight each other, cause trying to get a hit will lead to all most certain death. Being on either side in fort war is boring as the only place you make a notable difference is the door. On the offensive side you stick to the door and keep hitting it untill it goes down. When defending you can actually do something, but leaving the fort for more then few seconds leads to death as well as going further then few meters from the fort door.
Still there are moments that can be fun. If you manage to get into to an enemy force you can create nice havoc, but unfortunately those moments tend to be over rather quickly. I must also say that barbarians aren't that broken as the above might make them look like. Just think about it why you die so fast if you try to approach the enemy. It's because you are a great threat to the enemy so they try their best to keep you away from them.
Knight
Pro's: usually among the last ones to die
Con's: melee range, position bugs, slow, low mana
Knights share many of the same problems as their barbarians friends. Not being able to reach an enemy due to no range and slow speed is bad for the popularity of the class. For a knight it's in away even worse as they have one speed buff less and in order to kill the enemy they need to get mroe hits through. People can contradict this by saying that heavily armored Knights shouldn't be fast, because of high weight armors. Well to be honest knights with heavy armors should from the reality point of view be riding mounts :horsey: and thus be the fastest of all classes. It just doesn't provide good gameplay experiences to be a very slow class with no range, so some times you need to put the reality aspect aside.
Knight is supposed to be an sort of support class that helps their allies to stay alive, not by healing but taking dmg for them and giving them protection. This is a role that many players don't want to play and it's totally ok there are other classes for them to play. The problem is that currently a knight can't really do his job. Enemies don't target knights cause they are unlike to get them killed plus the knights don't oppose a great threat to them. In fact the shield tree is all most worthless. It has skills that don't seem to work half of the time, because they only affect probabilities and don't offer anything that is guaranteed to work everytime. Also it's auras are useless as even if realistic to shield only those behind you, that simply doesn't work well with the current game mechanics. Also their mana cost is rather high compared to their usefullness and the casters total mana.
In my view support class should be something that would be missed greatly if none of them in the the party. In regnum knights are the exact opposite. Conjurers are definetly missed, so are warlocks terrors, hunters track information, barbarians door bashing capabilities and marksmens long range, but most don't care at all if there's no knight in the group. The only lifeline of knights is their ability to stay alive long, so they get to enjoy the battle as long it last without that great fear of instant death.
Hunter
Pro's: fast speed, invisibility, tracks, escape spells, dmg reduction spells, ranged attacks and spells, lot of instants
Con's: low dmg, useless pets in bigger wars
NGD says hunters aren't ment to be assasins yet the element of surprise makes them the strongest class in 1on1 encounters and even without it they have very good chances of winning or at least escaping the battle alive. Their speed, tracking and invisibility makes them the only class that roam the war zone freely without fear of dying. This is a very big issue on horus as decent war activity is all most non existant for large parts of the day. Having only one class capable of doing well alone in the war zone drives more and more players towards that class. Which in the case of hunters makes the situation even more unbearable for other classes as with the growing numbers of hunters it's even more likely to get tracked and ambushed by a hunter. Previously we had at least the barbarians who could rely on their speed to escape most unwanted encounters, but now the priviledge of careless wz travel is limited to one class only.
Hunters are balanced in away that while being superior in solo, they aren't usefull in bigger wars. Their pets die very easily and without them their dmg output isn't that great. But with their good means of survival and chance to do surprise attacks from camo they can be valuable in war too.
Marksman
Pro's: longest range, decent speed, high dmg, very good dmg reduction spells, lot's of instants
Con's: fast mana consumption
With the introduction of strafing marksmen rule the wars of regnum. High dmg from long range allows them to be part of war at all times with very good dmg reduction capabilities making sure they don't face that great danger of dying while continuing to shoot deadly arrows at the enemies. Even if forced to close range they are far from hopeless, they can out run most classes and their defensive abilities keep them alive for some time even if they choose to stay and take the pounding.
Problem is their fast mana consumption, but even with normals they can do nice dmg. From a team point of view marxs don't have that vital skills, which would make them mandatory for a party, but they are still an nice addition to any group.
Conjurer
Pro's: heals, means of survival, alternative setups, mana control, range
Con's: main target, ungratefull allies, slow
Being the only healing class conjus are the core of any group. Even one support conjurer increases the capabilities of the group to an totally different level. Having few more just enchances the groups effectiviness even more. Based on what we see in game the support role isn't a role many wish to play. Many have leveled a conjurer, but spend most of their time on their other characters or play the conju as a warjurer. Despite being primarily a support class a conjurer can be a mighty dmg dealer with good means of survival. Many players despise those who choose to play like that, but I think the opportunity to play that way is vital to keep the conjurers interested in the game. I personally enjoy playing different roles (thus 3 chars) so limiting conjurers only to serve others isn't good for the game. It's clear that from the realm/group perspective a support conju is much more valuable, so the different roles the conjurers can take are nicely balanced in that sense.
Negative thing as a conjurer is that being so powerfull your foes want to take you out first. So despite the conjus good means of survival they are not always enough and force the conjurer to stay in the fort. The nerfs to conjurers means of survival has partly caused this and consequantly lead to a clear drop in the numbers support conjurers. Which makes battles last less time and the game involve more waiting and running instead of fighting. The good thing is that now it's much more easier to kick out a bigger enemy force from your forts. Which is unfortunately the most common situation in fort wars. (Which should be fixed, but isn't the subject of this post.)
Warlock
Pro's: good crowd control, range, areas, damaging capabilities, mana control
Con's: lack of defensive spells, cast times, slow
Some times it feels like warlocks exist only for one spell: Sultar's terror. It being a long range mass knock down with nice dmg it certainly belongs to every army and hardly any warlock leaves it out of their setup. Fortunately that's not all that warlocks do they have other means of crowd control too and nice ways of dealing damage. The tradional way is to make usage of their wast arsenal of spells, but there's also an alternative. I personally have been lately playing a staff mastery lock, because I just hate cast times and love the mobility given by strafing. (You can't strafe while casting, but you can while hitting normals.) This way the lock is little like a marksman. It has faster but lower hits and lower protection, but keeping the distance with strafing you can survive ok.
The weakness of a warlock comes from cast times (forces you to stand still and take the pounding), all most non existant dmg reduction spells and weak armor and hit points. Surely energy barrier is a great spell for staying alive and so are soulkeeper and vampirism, but those can get resisted/canceled so they don't always save you. But if you manage to stay alive a warlock is a deadly weapon.
Conclusion:
After writing all this I feel that I couldn't really describe the classes that well, but after wasting so much time writing the post I'll post it anyway. I guess my main points are the following:
1. Not being able to participate in war with melee classes and the possibility of not being able to land a single hit even in 1on1 situations.
2. There is only one solo class. Regnum has all the means off staying alive on your own in one class, when those could be distributed in several classes allowing more players to wonder around solo without constant fear of getting whacked. Example: one class could be able to track enemies, one could run from them with faster speed, another could be invisible, one could simply rely on it's strengh in most 1on1 situations, one would have spells to escape/disable the enemy, one could perhaps see the enemies from further distance etc.
Hopefully others will find this opening usefull and perhaps NGD get's some ideas for future changes and fixes. To me this just reminded why I should stay off the forums in this game and others.
To those that made it this far: Have a nice day and see you in the war zone!
We also have many threads discussing (read: complaining) about individual classes. But not such that summarizes them all.
Even though I admit, that I haven't got that much of experience on each and every class, i though I'd try to describe them and hope that others will fill up my holes. My own characters are (in order of creation) Wind's Whisper (hunter), Wind's Call (barbarian) and Wind's Whistle (warlock). I could have access to 50 lvl chars of the other classes too, but for several reasons (main reason being following the rules) I play only these 3. I've played bit more then a year and only on Horus in Syrtis, so that affects my judgement too. I also must say that I'm far from being a good player, so I can't for example say what class wins over another in 1on1, as I've probably lost the each and every class on my chars. So I guess I'm trying to say that this is based on my limited personal experience and is thus no absolute truth.
I try to focus on RvR, because that's what this game is supposed to be about. All though while playing on the desolate server of Horus you easily end up playing a lot on your own and for some classes this game fails badly in that aspect. So enough with the intro...
Barbarian
Pro's: hard hits, good door breaker
Con's: melee range, position bugs, slow, dies fast, low mana
Barbarians are currently annoying to play. In one versus one both archers and staff mastery using mages can keep a melee class out off range for ages with strafing and continue hitting them all the time. Even if you get in range on your screen position bugs may cause you not to hit even a target you have knocked down yourself. In my view it's simply unacceptable that melee classes can die in 1on1 with out landing a single hit, cause the classes that have range to their advantage are also faster. Barbarians should in my opinion be the fastest class on short distance. In bigger fights barbarians role is to watch ranged fight each other, cause trying to get a hit will lead to all most certain death. Being on either side in fort war is boring as the only place you make a notable difference is the door. On the offensive side you stick to the door and keep hitting it untill it goes down. When defending you can actually do something, but leaving the fort for more then few seconds leads to death as well as going further then few meters from the fort door.
Still there are moments that can be fun. If you manage to get into to an enemy force you can create nice havoc, but unfortunately those moments tend to be over rather quickly. I must also say that barbarians aren't that broken as the above might make them look like. Just think about it why you die so fast if you try to approach the enemy. It's because you are a great threat to the enemy so they try their best to keep you away from them.
Knight
Pro's: usually among the last ones to die
Con's: melee range, position bugs, slow, low mana
Knights share many of the same problems as their barbarians friends. Not being able to reach an enemy due to no range and slow speed is bad for the popularity of the class. For a knight it's in away even worse as they have one speed buff less and in order to kill the enemy they need to get mroe hits through. People can contradict this by saying that heavily armored Knights shouldn't be fast, because of high weight armors. Well to be honest knights with heavy armors should from the reality point of view be riding mounts :horsey: and thus be the fastest of all classes. It just doesn't provide good gameplay experiences to be a very slow class with no range, so some times you need to put the reality aspect aside.
Knight is supposed to be an sort of support class that helps their allies to stay alive, not by healing but taking dmg for them and giving them protection. This is a role that many players don't want to play and it's totally ok there are other classes for them to play. The problem is that currently a knight can't really do his job. Enemies don't target knights cause they are unlike to get them killed plus the knights don't oppose a great threat to them. In fact the shield tree is all most worthless. It has skills that don't seem to work half of the time, because they only affect probabilities and don't offer anything that is guaranteed to work everytime. Also it's auras are useless as even if realistic to shield only those behind you, that simply doesn't work well with the current game mechanics. Also their mana cost is rather high compared to their usefullness and the casters total mana.
In my view support class should be something that would be missed greatly if none of them in the the party. In regnum knights are the exact opposite. Conjurers are definetly missed, so are warlocks terrors, hunters track information, barbarians door bashing capabilities and marksmens long range, but most don't care at all if there's no knight in the group. The only lifeline of knights is their ability to stay alive long, so they get to enjoy the battle as long it last without that great fear of instant death.
Hunter
Pro's: fast speed, invisibility, tracks, escape spells, dmg reduction spells, ranged attacks and spells, lot of instants
Con's: low dmg, useless pets in bigger wars
NGD says hunters aren't ment to be assasins yet the element of surprise makes them the strongest class in 1on1 encounters and even without it they have very good chances of winning or at least escaping the battle alive. Their speed, tracking and invisibility makes them the only class that roam the war zone freely without fear of dying. This is a very big issue on horus as decent war activity is all most non existant for large parts of the day. Having only one class capable of doing well alone in the war zone drives more and more players towards that class. Which in the case of hunters makes the situation even more unbearable for other classes as with the growing numbers of hunters it's even more likely to get tracked and ambushed by a hunter. Previously we had at least the barbarians who could rely on their speed to escape most unwanted encounters, but now the priviledge of careless wz travel is limited to one class only.
Hunters are balanced in away that while being superior in solo, they aren't usefull in bigger wars. Their pets die very easily and without them their dmg output isn't that great. But with their good means of survival and chance to do surprise attacks from camo they can be valuable in war too.
Marksman
Pro's: longest range, decent speed, high dmg, very good dmg reduction spells, lot's of instants
Con's: fast mana consumption
With the introduction of strafing marksmen rule the wars of regnum. High dmg from long range allows them to be part of war at all times with very good dmg reduction capabilities making sure they don't face that great danger of dying while continuing to shoot deadly arrows at the enemies. Even if forced to close range they are far from hopeless, they can out run most classes and their defensive abilities keep them alive for some time even if they choose to stay and take the pounding.
Problem is their fast mana consumption, but even with normals they can do nice dmg. From a team point of view marxs don't have that vital skills, which would make them mandatory for a party, but they are still an nice addition to any group.
Conjurer
Pro's: heals, means of survival, alternative setups, mana control, range
Con's: main target, ungratefull allies, slow
Being the only healing class conjus are the core of any group. Even one support conjurer increases the capabilities of the group to an totally different level. Having few more just enchances the groups effectiviness even more. Based on what we see in game the support role isn't a role many wish to play. Many have leveled a conjurer, but spend most of their time on their other characters or play the conju as a warjurer. Despite being primarily a support class a conjurer can be a mighty dmg dealer with good means of survival. Many players despise those who choose to play like that, but I think the opportunity to play that way is vital to keep the conjurers interested in the game. I personally enjoy playing different roles (thus 3 chars) so limiting conjurers only to serve others isn't good for the game. It's clear that from the realm/group perspective a support conju is much more valuable, so the different roles the conjurers can take are nicely balanced in that sense.
Negative thing as a conjurer is that being so powerfull your foes want to take you out first. So despite the conjus good means of survival they are not always enough and force the conjurer to stay in the fort. The nerfs to conjurers means of survival has partly caused this and consequantly lead to a clear drop in the numbers support conjurers. Which makes battles last less time and the game involve more waiting and running instead of fighting. The good thing is that now it's much more easier to kick out a bigger enemy force from your forts. Which is unfortunately the most common situation in fort wars. (Which should be fixed, but isn't the subject of this post.)
Warlock
Pro's: good crowd control, range, areas, damaging capabilities, mana control
Con's: lack of defensive spells, cast times, slow
Some times it feels like warlocks exist only for one spell: Sultar's terror. It being a long range mass knock down with nice dmg it certainly belongs to every army and hardly any warlock leaves it out of their setup. Fortunately that's not all that warlocks do they have other means of crowd control too and nice ways of dealing damage. The tradional way is to make usage of their wast arsenal of spells, but there's also an alternative. I personally have been lately playing a staff mastery lock, because I just hate cast times and love the mobility given by strafing. (You can't strafe while casting, but you can while hitting normals.) This way the lock is little like a marksman. It has faster but lower hits and lower protection, but keeping the distance with strafing you can survive ok.
The weakness of a warlock comes from cast times (forces you to stand still and take the pounding), all most non existant dmg reduction spells and weak armor and hit points. Surely energy barrier is a great spell for staying alive and so are soulkeeper and vampirism, but those can get resisted/canceled so they don't always save you. But if you manage to stay alive a warlock is a deadly weapon.
Conclusion:
After writing all this I feel that I couldn't really describe the classes that well, but after wasting so much time writing the post I'll post it anyway. I guess my main points are the following:
1. Not being able to participate in war with melee classes and the possibility of not being able to land a single hit even in 1on1 situations.
2. There is only one solo class. Regnum has all the means off staying alive on your own in one class, when those could be distributed in several classes allowing more players to wonder around solo without constant fear of getting whacked. Example: one class could be able to track enemies, one could run from them with faster speed, another could be invisible, one could simply rely on it's strengh in most 1on1 situations, one would have spells to escape/disable the enemy, one could perhaps see the enemies from further distance etc.
Hopefully others will find this opening usefull and perhaps NGD get's some ideas for future changes and fixes. To me this just reminded why I should stay off the forums in this game and others.
To those that made it this far: Have a nice day and see you in the war zone!