Player vs. Everything: Coolest classes ever

[kudos]

The Enchanter (EverQuest)

EverQuest's Enchanter is one of the most interesting and challenging classes in the game. The difference between a good Enchanter and a bad Enchanter can make or break a group in many cases. Why? Because the Enchanter is almost completely devoted to crowd control. Your job is to weave enchantments upon your foes to leave them spellbound and helpless while your friends kill their friends. If you think you're hot stuff because you can sheep like a pro, imagine keeping four or five crowd control spells on various mobs, and maintaining them all as your only job. The Enchanter's core role is pure support.

As if that wasn't cool enough, Enchanters are also the masters of illusion and mind altering spells. They receive personal illusions to disguise themselves as commonly found inanimate objects or any other race (manipulating their faction standing in the process), can cast spells to frighten or befriend their enemies, charm their foes into doing their bidding, and bolster the minds of their friends with mana restoring and intelligence boosting spells. The Enchanter is a completely non-standard fantasy staple class, is fun and challenging to play, and has a whole bag full of fun tricks to play with.

The Lore Master (Lord of The Rings Online)

The first time I read about Lord of the Rings Online's Lore Master class, it immediately reminded me of the Enchanter with its heavy crowd-control emphasis and pets, but there's so much more to it that makes it a unique and interesting class. In addition to having a bunch of crowd control and stunning tricks, the Lore Master can also throw out heals to her group, use powerful offensive pets like the Bear (something an enchanter couldn't do), and even mix it up in melee with the right gear and skill setup.

While the abilities of the Lore Master are numerous and complex, what really got me was the idea that this class wasn't at all magical. LoTRO's setting is very low-magic, as fantasy games go. You don't see fireballs being conjured out of thin air. The designers solved this problem by making the Lore Master more of a trickster/sage/alchemist, which is awesome from a role-playing perspective. I love the idea that instead of just summoning a fireball, the Lore Master uses chemistry to make it, or throws powders and dusts at her enemies. How many games really let you be an epic chemist? Not many.

The Mesmer (Guild Wars)

The Mesmer of Guild Wars is another class that has some things in common with my beloved Enchanter. They're all about illusions, mind-altering spells, and disabling their foes. What's cool about Mesmers, however, is that they're much more offense-oriented with their magic-- more of a psionicist than an Enchanter, really. There's just something inherently cool about locking your opponent down by making them believe that they have to move slowly or killing them with fear by making their nightmares seem real.

They also are uniquely talented in quickly casting their spells, interrupting others, and denying their opponents energy, making them speedy, flexible characters that pair well with other casting professions who shut down their enemies. Pretty much every Guild Wars character I make uses a Mesmer class for its main or secondary profession.

The Hunter (World of Warcraft)

While World of Warcraft's Hunters are so common these days that the proverbial Night Elf Hunter is practically a joke, they were a really original class when WoW launched. You can see influences in the class from the pet classes of EverQuest and the archer classes of various other games, but the idea of a self-sufficient, DPS archer is a pretty uncommon one in most games. It's pure genius, to the point where when WoW first came out and I was just reading the introductory material, this was the class I wanted to play. Ironically, I've never gotten one past 25.

However, the hunter is a great class with tons of cool tricks and fun things to do. The combination of having high ranged DPS (which can continue without mana), the high AC of mail armor, and a pet which is almost as strong as another character on its own makes Hunters the perfect soloing class. Speaking of pets, the pet system is probably the coolest thing about the Hunter. Not only do you get to pick your pet from all of the monsters in the world, but each monster type has their own abilities, you get to name them, and there's a whole mini-game in finding and collecting pet abilities. Add in stuff like Feign Death, traps, and tracking, and you have a class that's got more flavor and character than almost any other. I'd love to see this type of class carried over into more games, now that Blizzard has established it.

The Adventurer (Anarchy Online)

You've probably never heard of the Adventurer unless you're one of the few people who played Anarchy Online, but it's probably one of the coolest classes ever. Adventurers are the ultimate generalist-- a sort of techno-druid. Depending on how you set up your skills, adventurers can be melee fighters with dual swords or ranged fighters with dual pistols. They're the second best healers in the game (after Doctors) and get bonuses to traveling skills, making them ideal for exploration fans.

In addition to all that stuff, Adventurers have the ability to morph themselves into a variety of animal forms. Everything from tiny rodents, to sabertooth tigers, to dragons. Yes, dragons. A class that can do everything I just talked about and turn into a flying serpentine bringer of death on top of it automatically gets a slot in this column, as far as I'm concerned. The technological flavor of the Adventurer combined with the magical elements mesh together to make a ridiculously fun and versatile class.

Now, these are just my opinion of what the coolest classes in various games have been. As you can see, I lean towards generalist support roles (are you surprised that my WoW main character is a Shaman?). Your mileage may vary, and there are plenty of games I've only played in passing where I may have missed a really unique and interesting class. Honorable mentions that come to mind are the Dragons of Horizons, Masterminds in City of Villains, and Beast Tamers in Ultima Online.

Agree or disagree? Personally I'd add EQ bard into the mix and get rid of WoW hunter but whatever.

Player vs. Everything: Coolest classes ever - Massively

[Aamina]

Hooray! Now that Blizzard has "established" a pet class, we can see more of this in MMOs. Leave it to them to revolutionize the genre with completely new ideas.

[Grave]

Originally Posted by kudos

Agree or disagree? Personally I'd add EQ bard into the mix and get rid of WoW hunter but whatever.

Make that VG Bard and I'd agree with you, although it was heavily influenced by the EQ Bard, so props regardless. And yeah, Hunter is not that revolutionary.

Blood Mage should also get some love from anyone discussing well designed classes, but I guess it's cooler to just hate on VG.

[Agraza]

Bard+1

Enchanter is a pretty good call though. Charming shit and solo owning in EQ, or pairing with a ranger/druid for some added security was pretty fuckin awesome. Even in a full group it was a great way to be more than the crack/mez bitch and a lot more exciting than the wizard's standard 2-3 nukes per mob and meditate.

[Vorph]

Loremaster is an abomination, or at least it was in beta.

Hunter? Is that article supposed to be comedy?

Adventurers in AO were interesting but fairly useless. Fixers were a far better, more fun, and much more unique class.

[Lost Ranger]

Going to toss my vote in on Bard as well. Both EQ and VG versions were pretty damn fun. It is the one class I really wish Blizzard would adopt (not the GH version) but I highly doubt we will ever see it.

My wrist is starting to hurt just thinking about the EQ version heh. Man I really loved /melody when they added that in!

[Tenks]

I saw this earlier today. No blood mage = no thanks.


And if selecting a WoW class why choose the hunter? The most cookie cutter hacked-job class in the game. If anything the way you tank via the rage mechanic of the warrior is really the only deviation from the normal formula WoW did.

[Grumpy Old Fart]

Originally Posted by kudos

The Lore Master (Lord of The Rings Online)

... this class wasn't at all magical. LoTRO's setting is very low-magic, as fantasy games go. You don't see fireballs being conjured out of thin air. The designers solved this problem by making the Lore Master more of a trickster/sage/alchemist, which is awesome from a role-playing perspective. I love the idea that instead of just summoning a fireball, the Lore Master uses chemistry to make it, or throws powders and dusts at her enemies. How many games really let you be an epic chemist? Not many.

The only problem with this is that by the time you've played a Loremaster to 20 or so, you really begin to realize how fucking stupid it is. Sure, the LotR license didn't permit Turbine to make a "magic-using" class, but what the fuck is the Loremaster really doing if it isn't "magical"? They try to pass it off as alchemy, etc., but what you're really doing is using magical "Words of ...", blasting wind, tossing firebombs (but not really "tossing" them, more like summoning fire out of mid-air), cursing, mezzing, etc.

While the class is still modestly entertaining, calling it "non-magical" is mere semantics to keep the JRR licensing folks happy and none of the players really believe that nonsense.

And otherwise pertaining to the OP, EQs enchanter (which I played to 50-something way back in the day) is still *THE* most fun I've ever had in any MMORPG. I'd love to get back into EQ as an enchanter if some friends would tag along. But, alas, there are no longer any mature, intelligent adult-only guilds in these games any more, and I fucking hate the retarded kiddies of the day.

I played a Mesmer in Guild Wars, and as far as the main forum posters went back at release, I was the first-ever to finish the entire PvE game solo with henchmen (verified with screenshots, of course). Henchman AI sucked ass back then (GET OUT OF THE FUCKING POISON SWAMP WATER, YOU FUCKING MORONS!!11), so I'm still sorta proud of that one. That class was also great fun (in PvE and PvP) and original, although not anything like EQs enchanter.

[Cuppycake]

This is my friend Cameron's post =)

Enchanter was a good choice, but I have to agree with bard as well. And this might cause disagreement, but the WoW priest class is awesome as well.

[Jait]

Originally Posted by Vorph

Adventurers in AO were interesting but fairly useless.

? Adventurers with backstab were one of the highest dps classes, and had a very good heal, insane speed mods (lil birdie), haste, etc.... Great group utility, and they were fucking uber. At least through the 3rd expansion. I haven't played since then.

[Steamrice]

The hunter would have been nice if they added all the pet abilities that have been sitting in the spell database since beta and left pets with special atttributes. Then pets would have mattered, instead they normalized every single pet into the same with 1 different spell that makes them different.

[kudos]

Originally Posted by Cuppycake

This is my friend Cameron's post =)

Enchanter was a good choice, but I have to agree with bard as well. And this might cause disagreement, but the WoW priest class is awesome as well.

Only thing I liked about priest in WoW was that you could switch to shadow priest.

[Cybsled]

His description of the "alpha build hunter" that never came to be was kind of my reaction as well. Back when WoW was still in closed beta, I remember reading about the class and wanting to be one on release. Instead, since hunters weren't in yet, I picked a warlock...the thinking being that getting used to the pet mechanics might give me a leg-up. I ended up loving the warlock class, rolled a hunter as an afterthought long after the game launched, and stopped playing it at lvl 22 ;p

[Vorph]

Originally Posted by Jait

? Adventurers with backstab were one of the highest dps classes, and had a very good heal, insane speed mods (lil birdie), haste, etc.... Great group utility, and they were fucking uber. At least through the 3rd expansion. I haven't played since then.

I don't remember them being that great during the second expansion, but I'll admit it was a long time ago. At any rate, the topic was supposed to be coolest classes and I don't see how you could possibly choose anything from AO except the Fixer for that list.

[Zest]

Hunters are "revolutionary" but Druids are not. Gotcha.