It’s not that swordies are OP, they’re just the best class. Though I do think that the highlander changes pushed them over the top. Nothing wrong with being the best, since there will always be one no matter how balanced the game is. It feels like no matter what path you take with your swordsman, everything will work out okay as long as you consider the stance limitations.
- high-hop has cross guard stabbing combo which is really strong
- high-barb has all sorts of assorted cc, and the highest overall dps.
- pel-barb has all the advantage of barb’s power+cc with pel’s utility in parties
- pel-hop is the defacto defensive tank that still brings power to boss fights
- high3+ is all power. loses out on barb’s cc, but that won’t matter in boss fights or status immune pvp
- pel3+ You have a better swash, but mob density in tos isn’t high enough to make use of it.
After those, you can branch out to pick any endgame class based on your personal preferences and you literally can’t go wrong except for probably pel3.
When it comes to the other classes, the options are far fewer and that shows how inflexible they are compared to swordies. Look at Wizard:
- pyro-linker is probably the second strongest dps after the swordies but much squishier
- cryo-kino is stellar in boss fights and 1v1 pvp but weaker at mobbing compared to linker
- pyro-kino is just worse overall than both pyrolinker and cryokino
- cryo-linker is worse than pyro linker in almost all cases except mage’s tower,
- cry3+ ???
- wiz3+ ???
Although most of the wizard options are poor, the good ones are perfectly viable once you pick up your later classes. Getting there with other classes are a challenge, but your late classes will carry you.
Archer feels like it has way more options, but I feel like this is only because the current options are so bad, people are having a hard time figuring out the optimal paths. Like Ranger is quite good early, dips down at c2, but comes back at c3. Changes in quality like this make it hard to judge the value of a build. I started noting down possible paths, but there’s just so many and none of them seem particularly noteworthy over the other. It’s a class tree with a bunch of different ways to do damage but no clear design goal. One thing is for certain, it will be weaker than swordie in nearly every aspect until R4+ or R5+ when they catch up.
Cleric looks like it has more options because they support and all, but it really doesn’t. There’s the physical path and the magic path. Having this split means they have access to the same classes, but may elect to skip some in favor of stronger predecessor classes.
- Priest-Diev Nobody seems to talk about this. From videos I’ve seen, it looks really weak.
- Priest2-Pally Offers a bit more utility but less damage than Monk
- Priest3-Monk Makes training easier with more offensive skills while still supporting
- Priest3-Pardoner Horrendously weak, will be a long grind to make money through selling scrolls
- Krivis paths are even more numerous than the physical cleric paths and they all are roughly the same in quality. I will note that the more points in Krivis, The overall stronger the class is. Branching away from Krivis offers more utility/support in exchange for less power. This is often the case due to Krivis’ cooldowns.
Going Cleric saves a lot of money in exchange for less dps. It’s fun if you’ve played another class before and notice the difference in the amount of silver saved from the additional sp regeneration and being able to heal. Int clerics dont auto attack, so they also save money on repairs.
The cleric tree lacks a lot of diversity, but I guess that’s the cost of being split between phys/magic. I’d say they are the second most complete class after Swordie. Archer feels the most incomplete while Wizards are a over halfway done. When a class feels like you can take almost any branch and feel like a complete unique class, that’s when tos’ class system will shine. Right now it’s like 50% viable swordies, 10% viable wizards, 5% viable archers, 35% viable clerics.
Thats str/con/spr/dex btw.
In my opinion, Cleric is the most efficient class to Solo.