What are the most powerful classes in 3.03?

[N1C1]

Hi guys,

 

what are the most powerful classes in 3.03 in your oppinion?

 

Like it was discussed here: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/76011-lets-talk-class-balance/

 

Thank you!

 

 

[Elric Galad]

1 - Priest : Basically buff your party up to crazy levels. Also best healer. Solid damage dealer during his/her free time.

2 - Wizard : AoE CC and damages like no other.

3 - Druid : like a weaker wizard, but storms and support spells are awesome.

 

Then, there is a gap.

 

4 - Paladin : Support tank with even AoE damages

5 - Chanter : crazy tanky AoE damages with dragon trashed

6 - Ranger : very high single target damages, pet tanking and recursive CC

7 - Monk : damages and CC at will when beaten. Tanky.

8 - Cipher : solid class, lots of good spells, but less raw power than true casters.

9 - Barbarian : lots of improvement im 3.03. Tankier than what you would expect. Very good AoE, crazy heart of fury.

10 - Fighter : solid class, does not shine that much but extremely reliable.

11 - Rogue : Best single target damages. But that's about it.

 

This is for party play. For solo, I'm not sure but Wizard and Druid would probably be very high.

Edited July 26, 2016 by Elric Galad

[Raven Darkholme]

1 - Priest : Basically buff your party up to crazy levels. Also best healer. Solid damage dealer during his/her free time.

2 - Wizard : AoE CC and damages like no other.

3 - Druid : like a weaker wizard, but storms and support spells are awesome.

 

Then, there is a gap.

 

4 - Paladin : Support tank with even AoE damages

5 - Chanter : crazy tanky AoE damages with dragon trashed

6 - Ranger : very high single target damages, pet tanking and recursive CC

7 - Monk : damages and CC at will when beaten. Tanky.

8 - Cipher : solid class, lots of good spells, but less raw power than true casters.

9 - Barbarian : lots of improvement im 3.03. Tankier than what you would expect. Very good AoE, crazy heart of fury.

10 - Fighter : solid class, does not shine that much but extremely reliable.

11 - Rogue : Best single target damages. But that's about it.

 

This is for party play. For solo, I'm not sure but Wizard and Druid would probably be very high.

That list looks very good.

Chanter maybe higher than paldin idk.

[limaxophobiacq]

Priest and Wizard are certainly the strongest classes no doubt. Donno which I'd say is the absolute strongest. Priest is the one you least want to be without but I think you might be better of with one priest and two wizards over two priests and one wizard.

 

Chanter over Paladin for sure, and IMO the Druid to Chanter gap isn't even that large. Chanters don't have the CC druids have with Relentless Storm but the AoE damage with steady heals is incredible, as are the summons, and they can do it all while tanking at the same time.

 

I'd put Cipher way higher up, on the same level as Druids/Chanters, and don't really see how you can place them that low. Defensive Mindweb alone is such a crazy powerfull spell (like 'I don't see how you can lose a fight if you have this up'), unless we're talking soloing the game, that at level cap they're certainly up there.

 

My list:

 

1. Priest

2. Wizard

 

3. Druid

4. Cipher

5. Chanter

 

6. Ranger

7. Paladin

8. Barbarian

9. Monk

10. Fighter

11. Rogue

Edited July 26, 2016 by limaxophobiacq

[dambros]

I would love to hear what the more experienced solo players think about class tier (for solo of course). Priest and wiz still on top?

[Sfzrx]

For solo people have done all contents on paladin, so paladin would be on the top, building tank, people have had success soloing with monk, druid, ranger, rogue, chanter and wizard as well, I'm personally having a lot of fun with wizard solo though, currently about to hit level 16, doing white march 2 contents, didn't scale any act but i feels like i can prob scale act 3 and white march 1  if i do it again, sky dragon and adra dragon have clear weaknesses, not sure if if i can beat alphine and llengrath later though.

[Kazuma]

The best class is the one you beat the game with.

[Elric Galad]

Cipher are not "that low" in my list, it's just that the other classes are higher

 

Basically, Obsidian did an excellent job about balance and for me rank #4 to #9 are quite hard to determine. Even #10 and #11 are not that much below.

 

So I might reconsider a bit cipher's rank. It won't make a big difference.

 

Defensive Mindweb is indeed very strong but drain most of your focus. It worths it, but I'm not sure it can contest a druid chain casting Storm, Form of the Delegan, Moonwell and Venombloom even if none of these spells worth Mindweb on its own (well, maybe Relentless Storm). That's why IMHO Vancians are hard to beat.

Edited July 27, 2016 by Elric Galad

[Raven Darkholme]

For solo people have done all contents on paladin, so paladin would be on the top, building tank, people have had success soloing with monk, druid, ranger, rogue, chanter and wizard as well, I'm personally having a lot of fun with wizard solo though, currently about to hit level 16, doing white march 2 contents, didn't scale any act but i feels like i can prob scale act 3 and white march 1  if i do it again, sky dragon and adra dragon have clear weaknesses, not sure if if i can beat alphine and llengrath later though.

Yeah paladin is one of the best at solo.

Personally I'd rate the Chanter higher.

And ofc wizard comes very close.

Priest needs a bit longer for the buffs to cast but is no doubt capable of soloing all content.

[Boeroer]

I think it's a good thing that "best" not only depends on your party composition, character level (thereare certain levels which boost a class a lot, linke lvl 9 for chanters and barbs, lvl 13 for paladins) and difficulty (e.g. chanters are more useful in PotD) but also on your playstyle, your preferences and the tricks you know. It also depends a lot on the special build you are playing. For example I think that the Witch Doctor monk is one of the most powerful character I ever played - and that from lvl 7 on. The combination of very high AoE damage and CC (if you have a weapon with on-crit effect) with ranged attacks and blinding speed makes this so devastating. And it works in every party and well as solo (if you build it a bit more sturdy).

Or look at a rogue whom you use as Deathblow spell caster with all the spell bindings and scrolls you can get. He's impressive as long as he has spells and still does his single target damage thing when he has not.

 

So at least you'd have to make a sheet, seperated by difficulty, where you have all levels from 1 to 16 and determine which class could be best at that level. And a even more thorough approach would be to compare all the builds you know, not simply classes. Given that some classes can be build very differently.

[Kazuma]

Hey, at least we can all agree (I think) that it's a good thing that the humble trap isn't the best class in the game. Iirc there was more than one D&D game were you could stack many many traps on one spot and instagib anything in the game given the chance to prepare it. Though that was patched out of most (all?) of them.

Edited July 27, 2016 by Kazuma

[rheingold]

I think it's a good thing that "best" not only depends on your party composition, character level (thereare certain levels which boost a class a lot, linke lvl 9 for chanters and barbs, lvl 13 for paladins) and difficulty (e.g. chanters are more useful in PotD) but also on your playstyle, your preferences and the tricks you know. It also depends a lot on the special build you are playing. For example I think that the Witch Doctor monk is one of the most powerful character I ever played - and that from lvl 7 on. The combination of very high AoE damage and CC (if you have a weapon with on-crit effect) with ranged attacks and blinding speed makes this so devastating. And it works in every party and well as solo (if you build it a bit more sturdy).

Or look at a rogue whom you use as Deathblow spell caster with all the spell bindings and scrolls you can get. He's impressive as long as he has spells and still does his single target damage thing when he has not.

 

So at least you'd have to make a sheet, seperated by difficulty, where you have all levels from 1 to 16 and determine which class could be best at that level. And a even more thorough approach would be to compare all the builds you know, not simply classes. Given that some classes can be build very differently.

You'd also have to specifiy what role the character is supposed to play. With few exceptions most classes can't do everything.

The only classes who can do everything -  dps and crowd control really well are wizards and druids. But neither of them are awesome tanks.

Obviously a chanter at high level can add damage. But overall the classes tend to specialize into dps, support, crowd control and tanking roles and can't really match a specialist in a particular area. So it really depends what you mean by power?

I reckon as an alrounder type character though, a monk has got to be tops. Tanks, dps with some crowd control. That of course does not make it the most powerful character unless you define power as allround ability.

Edited July 27, 2016 by rheingold

[Climhazzard]

I think some of the quest related spells you can find for Wizard might be OP.  With Concelhaut's Hammer I could lock down any boss playing on hard, I stunlocked 2 dragons simultaneously.

 

But I redid the last dragon fight a couple of times for fun and figured out how to stunlock them with my monk too via longpain+force of anguish.  So overall the game is feeling fairly balanced right now.  Though I haven't messed around with any good endgame fighter/rogue/barb builds, a lot of their builds are very item dependent so I steer away from using them early game and never go back by endgame because I get used to using my party the way it is.

Edited July 27, 2016 by Climhazzard

[Boeroer]

A barb with HoF 1/encounter is not very item dependent. Give him any 2 sabres and he will be great. I'm playing one solo (PotD) atm and he's very much endgame viable.

[Elric Galad]

All classes are equal, but some are more.

 

For me it is hard to imagine something coming close from Devotion + Crown of the faithful, or chained Shadowflames or a Spiritshifted druid charging with all storm spells active.

 

A balanced party should have a mix of classes, but vancians caster will dominate the difficulty spikes most of the time.

 

Still, there is no huge gap between class.

 

Even with rank #10, the CC level of a Disciplined fighters using Overwhelming wave with an item is hard to beat.

Same for rank #11, a Rogue using Deathblows and duplicated fireball sabers to fast cast Direballs is hard to beat for damages too.

 

There might be Ranks, but there are also niche for very specific roles.

[Sfzrx]

Same for rank #11, a Rogue using Deathblows and duplicated fireball sabers to fast cast Direballs is hard to beat for damages too.

Does sneak attack even work with spells? I remember trying the 15% sneak attack a long time ago and it didn't work with spells, not in the combat log.

[Boeroer]

No, but Deathblows do.

[Clerith]

Boeroer said it very well. Difficulty and levels matter a lot. However, generally speaking, these are my rankings:

 

1. Wizard

2. Priest

3. Druid

 

4. Monk

5. Paladin

6. Ranger

7. Chanter

8. Cipher

9. Barbarian

10. Fighter

11. Rogue

 

Basically, the top 3 (all traditional spellcasters) are the clear top 3, then the rest are extremely close to each other. Despite putting rogue in last place, I think it's a pretty good class. To be honest, I had real problems with the 6-11 placements.

 

People who've beat the game solo with all the classes probably have the clearest image, or people who have rolled mains as every class. The classes that you choose to focus on really shine, while you could have some negative experiences from npcs or if you didn't know how to play the class optimally. So I think that people with <300 hours of play time will have very varying opinions.

[N1C1]

hi guys, really interesting answers, thank you so much!

 

since i prefer to be the main dmg dealer or tank i will go ahead with either wizard or druid, but i am already looking forward / hoping to get a priest as a mate in my team and i will also put a lot of focus on properly building the priest besides my main character.

 

thanks again!

[Boeroer]

When you take a wizard or druid who use implements:

 

Take Envenomed Strike. With a wizard, take it as soon as you get Blast, because it works with Blast's AoE. It's great.

If you want to play a druid and you want to use Rot Skulls, take it as soon you get that. Env. Strike works with the AoE of Rot Skulls.

 

Both Variants are powerful and make certain encounters like bounties way easier, because you can cause about 100 raw damage per foe in an AoE - 3/rest.

Edited July 28, 2016 by Boeroer

[Masterteo89]

For me the best class is monk.

 

If you develop it well, it rocks like no other class.

 

Monk is very fast, has good hp and the more he is damaged the more he gets stronger. ( with a talent...)

 

Plus, monk can kick away the enemyes with an early ability, meaning you will never be surrounded. And it means also that you can keep stopping the stronger monsters of a party, never giving them enough time to attack you.

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------

 

In short, in my opinion monk is the best class. But you have to know what skills you should develop. And you have no time to rest : unlike a paladin or a fighter, a monk in order to bee good has to be used.

 

If you throw a monk in a fight and do nothing, he will probably die.

 

A monk requires to be controlled most of the times. Else, don't do it.

 

That's why i think that a new player will hardly make a good monk in his first gameplay. Monk is more complex than what you may think.

[Climhazzard]

Just get the shod in faith boots for your monk, level up survival for +healing, wear something like Maneha's scale armor for even more +healing, then put him on point, turn his AI on, and let him blow stuff up with Torment's reach until you feel like micromanaging him (usually when his wounds fill up).  Monk doesn't have to be complex, and he can be very strong, more so when heavily managed like every class.  But after using relentless storm (druid), basically locking down every enemy on the screen, then shape shifting to do more melee damage than your melee classes, you probably won't think monk is the best class, but I do think he fills front liner and enemy backline disrupter roles better than any caster classes.

Edited July 28, 2016 by Climhazzard

[dambros]

When you take a wizard or druid who use implements:

Take Envenomed Strike. With a wizard, take it as soon as you get Blast, because it works with Blast's AoE. It's great.

If you want to play a druid and you want to use Rot Skulls, take it as soon you get that. Env. Strike works with the AoE of Rot Skulls.

Both Variants are powerful and make certain encounters like bounties way easier, because you can cause about 100 raw damage per foe in an AoE - 3/rest.

Wait a minute, are you saying that I can envonomed striked multiple enemies with only 1 charge because of the Blast aoe splash?

 

If the answer is yes, can a priest do the same somehow? I want to abuse that + cleansing flames soooo hard now...

Edited July 28, 2016 by dambros

[Masterteo89]

Just get the shod in faith boots for your monk, level up survival for +healing, wear something like Maneha's scale armor for even more +healing, then put him on point, turn his AI on, and let him blow stuff up with Torment's reach until you feel like micromanaging him (usually when his wounds fill up).  Monk doesn't have to be complex, and he can be very strong, more so when heavily managed like every class.  But after using relentless storm (druid), basically locking down every enemy on the screen, then shape shifting to do more melee damage than your melee classes, you probably won't think monk is the best class, but I do think he fills front liner and enemy backline disrupter roles better than any caster classes.

 

I don't do the WM, so no Maneha's scale. INT for my monk is always at 10, because i don't do AoE skills and such.

 

I say monk is complex because i give him a strong build but that requires a lot of micromanaging to be effective.

 

I'm not a fan of putting characters in a battle, turn AI on and then wait that the AI wins the battle in my place.

[Boeroer]

 

When you take a wizard or druid who use implements:

Take Envenomed Strike. With a wizard, take it as soon as you get Blast, because it works with Blast's AoE. It's great.

If you want to play a druid and you want to use Rot Skulls, take it as soon you get that. Env. Strike works with the AoE of Rot Skulls.

Both Variants are powerful and make certain encounters like bounties way easier, because you can cause about 100 raw damage per foe in an AoE - 3/rest.

Wait a minute, are you saying that I can envonomed striked multiple enemies with only 1 charge because of the Blast aoe splash?

 

If the answer is yes, can a priest do the same somehow? I want to abuse that + cleansing flames soooo hard now...

The answer is yes.

But as far as I know there's no way to do it with a priest. Only splash damage from implements (Rot Skulls counts as one) seems to do this.