First off, let me begin by saying I love this game. I played RO back in the days along with a countless other mmo’s including WoW. I think this game is unique, and I love the class system, albeit imbalanced and clunky. My main currently is a lvl 145 cleric1->kriv2->bokor2 and it’s fun despite party play being sub-par to okay at best.
Now on to my main rant/discussion, the absence of a dedicated “thief” or “assassin” class.
Yes, I get it, the sneaky melee dps characters are being split between the archer and swordsman trees(rogue, shinobi), but it really bothers me honestly.
Shinobi - I feel it awkward to have a shinobi with a swordsman background(bash, thrust, warcry, etc etc), and then a pirate, what?(corsair). It makes no sense to me, so it makes the class really unappealing to me. Instead, it would make more sense for shinobi to be part of class which offers a staple skill such as “hide”, “dash”, or “dodge” at circle 1. It seems more of a logical progression to have shinobi in that class tree.
Conclusion - I see swordsman complaining that all they’re good for is tanking late game. By moving shinobi out of the swordsman tree, you can properly balance the swordsman class by making sure the 2h sword/Spear dps builds are dishing out damage and those that want to tank are tanking. This way, you don’t have a 3rd dimension(a ninja/shinobi class) making it even harder to balance the swordsman tree. You can even completely move duel wielding classes out of swordsman tree because it doesn’t mesh well with the first 3-4 ranks of swordsman, it just doesnt make much sense.
So for the sake of balance and things making sense, a sneaky or dodgy melee class should be added to properly balance the game, otherwise some classes are always going to be underplayed, misrepresented, or just streight up avoided because it just doesnt make sense to have a swordsman shinobi.
I was kind of all over the place, but you get the idea. Let me know how you feel about this :). Please be nice, I tend to get a little argumentative.
edit: I would also like to add that the ninja class is RO was really unique. It can be played both as a mage and a physical class with unique machanics such as casting fire on the floor and dashing out of the area. Just throwing it out there, it wouldn’t make sense to have a class this fun in either a mage or swordsman tree.
edit2: I wanted to add earlier, but a new tree doesn’t need to have 20 classes. It can be a more linear tree with 5-6 classes. 20 classes per tree isn’t a law. It will also be easier to balance, which has proven to be a problem so far.
edit3: Removing the rogue section because people are failing to understand the topic, which is logical class progression, which the shinobi clearly is not. I don’t want the discussion to be about rogues, but rather a playstyle fitting a “thief class” or a “sneaky/agile class”. I’m going to add it to the end as “removed”, since I don’t feel comfortable completely removing part of the post.
REMOVED: Rogue- Rogue isn’t as misplaced as shinobi, but it still bothers me that all of a sudden, when you grab rogue, your archer becomes some sneaky melee backstabber. It makes 0 sense with the rest of the archer kit except maybe the sapper, because traps are neither melee nor ranged. Again, rogue would benefit from a base class which logically progressed to becoming a sneaky backstabber.
