Classes, why and why not to play each one.

[Kurp]

I'm really torn on what to play for retail. I had a lot of fun with Gladiator and Assassin during beta, but I also like Templar and Ranger. Cleric is the outside shot. I'm finding it really difficult to find information about how the classes play at level cap.

[Dantrag]

me on rng and why I love it :D

YouTube - Tambaku solo

lol i like my little cameo at the end

[fishstix]

I'm really torn on what to play for retail. I had a lot of fun with Gladiator and Assassin during beta, but I also like Templar and Ranger. Cleric is the outside shot. I'm finding it really difficult to find information about how the classes play at level cap.

I think whatever you find fun from 1-30, will continue to be fun through to 50. Unless you're planning lowman stuff, I don't think the class selection will be all that important with a good legion.

[Fallyn]

I'm really torn on what to play for retail. I had a lot of fun with Gladiator and Assassin during beta, but I also like Templar and Ranger. Cleric is the outside shot. I'm finding it really difficult to find information about how the classes play at level cap.

I'm pretty much in the same boat; Gladiator, Templar, Sorc or Chanter for release, only 2 of those I've had alot of experience with, (Glad/Chant) but the other 2, I wanna try out properly.

[Purrrfect]

Nice video fish. That looks like the fun part of ranger, but I'm just afraid I would hate leveling.

[Vail]

reading about the ranger stuff here, and knowing how assassin is first hand makes me think.

when I've leveled up other classes alot of them stop progression on the skills learned 1-9
Spiritmasters not getting better absorb energy or improved verison of the flame bolt, ice chain, frozen shock, and blaze (well SM does get an earth verison that covers the "ice chain/frozen shock chain" with their chains of earth/stone shock, which are both instant cast so it's slightly better imho)
on the opposite end: sorcerer never gets improvement only to Erosion, and just later upgrades on stoneskin.

Chanter not getting an upgrade to the Heaven's Judgment (but do get upgrades of hallowed strike obviously)

Clerics seem to improve on all the skills they get 1-9 with the exception of blessing of health (which only chanter get's the rank 2 version)

Ranger at least get's upgrades of Swift Edge/Soul Slash and surprise attack even, only missing out on the rank 2 version of Hide

Templars, Gladiators, and Assassins improve on every single one of their 1-9 skills, so what the hell

[Hitoshura]

I am seriously considering leveling Ranger as an alt, it looks like a lot of fun. Now that we have had a while playing the full release of the game, anyone mind telling me how good/useful they are in PVP/Abyss areas. Just curious how their range and everything works in the air.

Also considering Assassin all the way, any higher level Assassins pretty happy so far?

[Tomino]

little bump.
I'm quite curious on your opinion about classes now that people have reached or are near lv50, plus all the abyss stuff and so on...

[Ohaigaiz]

so, i'm at a crossroads. i'm bored. i got SM to 23 and quit after 3 days. i got back online after seeing the future of aion video thinking i would be rejuvenated or something but i cannot get into this game. i'm thinking it's the class?

i'm more interested in ranger or templar. basically a ranged or a tank. i've never played a tank in my life with mmos whether it be wow or ffxi so i'd give that a shot. any information on these and all classes would be helpful

[MrSamuels]

Like people have said in this post somewhere Ranger is pretty boring untill you hit 16 > 19 > 22 then it starts to utilize its bow more often and get some pretty serious crits off, Rangers in the abyss are also god mode (well they seem god mode to me anyways) fighting guards you will have pretty much 24/7 mau form, plus you can keep a snare up whilst either flying away or pursuing your helpless victim. As for groups for PVE, i really don't know about Ranger, they are almost too bursty, and when everything is off cooldown i'm not sure what you can do other then auto attack?

As for Templar, everyone is going to want one, as good as a good Gladiator can tank, a templar can always do better so someone is always going to want you, Templar's are fairly nice to grind with at the start as you get some pretty OP defensive abilities and obviously you have a lot of defense so aren't getting owned in the face. Talking to my Templar friend it does seem to slow the higher you get but he doesn't use a Greatsword so maybe he could be quicker then he is.
For PVP i personally don't like going with a Templar, if you are going to do something with a Templar you will always be the first target, noone is ever going to target you because you are such a bitch to get down, Bodyguard can help but its useless in the abyss cause of range needed and height issues. Inescable Judgement is quite good but a lot of the times the templar will do it and actually pull someone away as on their screen you didn't move etc.

My best piece of advice to you is to level all 3 to level 30, your Spiritmaster Ranger and Templar, it shouldn't take long even if you do work, see which one you like most, then for the one you do like most you have 3 pieces of very nice blue gear in the Daevonian armor set.

[drewbixcube]

Cleric is my main and I have a glad alt that I started recently and they can't even compare. It's hard to play another job that can't cure itself like cleric can :<
PvE - Fucking amazing solo, you can solo elites probably once you get flash of recovery, maybe even before that if you don't take any risks and wait to heal at low hp like I do D: Great exp killing elites 1-3 levels higher than you as well, I'm tempted to try and solo exp in FT for the hell of it.
PvP - Obviously its nice to have cures in PvP. The only thing that really can get me one on one is a sorc if I forget and let them in close range then they can nearly 1 shot me :<. Anything else is pretty easy as long as they don't get lucky on crits and stunlock me for cures, flash of recovery is a 30sec cooldown and that's a looong time to take a lot of damage if you can't get a cure off.
Group PvP - hope you like healing, probably won't have much time to dps by yourself

[Berabouman]

This is going to be kind of a tl;dr post, feel free to skip the sections that bore you or that you can't relate to (which hopefully isn't going to be the whole post)

Anyway, alt time! I have a Level 36 Sin which I enjoy pretty much so far, but I do get bored playing her now and then and I can't shake the niggling suspicion that there might be a class which I would enjoy more. So, figuring out which to play.

First off the ones that are probably out :

Spiritmaster : Since I like PvE, this was the first one I rolled. Messed around a bit at 20 (levelled through crafting) but honestly found it rather boring when compared to Assassin, even though it was really safe. Also, the pets don't look cool IMHO. Does it get better later? I hear fear is really OP in PvP.

Cleric : I have nothing against healers, just that the Thunderbolt skill causes my screen to flash and that poses a health hazard for me. (I had the same problem in FF11, had to turn off skills because Mythic WSes in meripos were flashing the damn screen all the time) Can you turn off the skill graphics (I don't see that option in game) or not use the skill? If not, Cleric is probably out. If not, I would consider it.

Chanter : Don't really like Bard classes. Solowise it looks pretty boring judging from vids. Also, seems to me that if you want to play a group class, you should play Cleric or Templar since all the shout groups on my server never shout for Chanter, only HEALZ AND TANK PLS.

---

Ranger : Played it a bit at 22, found it pretty fun. I like the whole Jumpshotting thing even though I haven't quite perfected it yet since I come from a fighting game background. Plus, you can solo elites!

PvPwise, as another posted pointed out, they seem like the kings of the Abyss to me - flight, range, burst DPS. I sort of want a PvP class or a group class to play as an alt since Assassins suck at both.

Sorcerer : Seems like it's a magical Ranger to me...ranged burst DPS. If only you could Jump Shot spells to cut short cast times Has the better CC I guess? Gets shouted for a lot on my server. Maybe it would be the middle of the road in terms of group and solo classes?

Seems good in PvP too, though less so than Ranger (once again, no actual experience with either in PvP, basing on videos and in-game combat I've seen)

Templar : Didn't originally consider playing one, but their skills look really cool (I love anything multi-hit or that looks multi-hit) and I like the fact you can switch weapon sets for different occasions. Do they really solo that slowly? It seems that the lessened downtime you would have offsets the slowness...to my untrained eye at least.

Seems crappy in PvP, because it's melee and burst dps seems to rule in roost in PvP.

Gladiator : Ah, the class I wished I picked instead. I am more of a frontal charge kind of guy as opposed to being sneaky, and I think the skills look way cool...much cooler than Assassins, unfortunately. If I'm going to see the same skills all the time while grinding, they had better look good!

On the downside, though, they hardly ever get picked for groups and I'm afraid I would get bored playing ANOTHER melee dps class. PvPwise they seem the strongest out of the melee classes, since they can knock people down (or perhaps I am overestimating the power of knockdowns)

So that's about it, still don't know what to play. My initial idea was to get my Sin to around 40, grind for loot, use it to level up alts via crafting to 20 and then see what the class was like...which I might still do, but is gonna take a helluva long time, and feedback is good in any case.

Would be great if anyone with 30+ experience in the class/es could tell me what they were like. I know there is no god class that can PvE/PvP/group/solo elites all together, just want a feel for the class in general.

[arus2001]

Really shouldn't take up Gladiator expecting to roll over anything and everything. Some of the core game mechanics don't favor them in PvP, and the class is perhaps too heavily gear and stigma dependent to be nothing more than free AP for other classes with plenty of ranged attacks and crowd control unless you happen to have a lot of time and money to blow.

Only reason I've really stuck with it is because I have a bad habit of finishing things even if they might not be the most enjoyable. On the other hand, there's nothing saying that NC won't address the issues the class has and add nifty stuff to it later. I've also capped Aether and Gathering on the character on top of trying to Expert Alchemy.

Really, we don't bring anything to fancy to groups unless it's an odd one that favors AoEing. We're competition to Templars on Plate (and swords if you happen to dual wield). People blindly assume all Gladiators just whirl around and fuck up CCs. It's also believed other classes do more damage, of which there is a bit of validity to that if you're being restricted from using some of your damage abilities (AoEs). Doesn't really matter that I've tanked better than some templars I've come across or mobs take phenomenally longer to kill if I'm off-tanking or had to AFK briefly. Sadly, I wind up being a last resort for the few legion activities that pop up and LFG applications have seen way too many rejections for my liking. So, while my experiences might not be the same for everyone, the fact they can and do happen might be cause for reconsidering something more popular.

[Lebzile]

temp is a blast to solo with imo. not as fast as a rng obviosly, but faster and safer then glad it felt to me.

[arus2001]

Yeah, even over 440 crit, sometimes soloing turns into a case of, "God, please knock this fucker down so I can CC/DB/Stop getting eaten by this bitch mob's 600+ attacks"

[LurkaKitty]

Sorcs can jumpcast

[Berabouman]

They can? But you still have to deal with the cast timers right?

[Pooky]

They can? But you still have to deal with the cast timers right?

Yes, you just have to time a jump near the end of the cast bar.

[Naiya]

Gladiator : Ah, the class I wished I picked instead. I am more of a frontal charge kind of guy as opposed to being sneaky, and I think the skills look way cool...much cooler than Assassins, unfortunately. If I'm going to see the same skills all the time while grinding, they had better look good!

On the downside, though, they hardly ever get picked for groups and I'm afraid I would get bored playing ANOTHER melee dps class. PvPwise they seem the strongest out of the melee classes, since they can knock people down (or perhaps I am overestimating the power of knockdowns)

No, no, no. Glad is one of the weakest classes in pvp, Yeah ok we can knock players down (for 2 seconds) so unless you can burst them down in that time it's game over, they get back up, bind/slow you and just kill you from range, maybe pvp gets better at higher levels but from my experience Glad is the weakest pvp class in the game

[Lebzile]

No, no, no. Glad is one of the weakest classes in pvp, Yeah ok we can knock players down (for 2 seconds) so unless you can burst them down in that time it's game over, they get back up, bind/slow you and just kill you from range, maybe pvp gets better at higher levels but from my experience Glad is the weakest pvp class in the game

seriosly? glad isn't a solo class, yes, but they hit like trucks at 50. i watched one of the korean vids and a sin got stomped by a dual-wield glad