Rating the Difficulty level for Essential Classes

King Nate

First Post
From my understanding, the essential classes are supposed to vary as far as ease of use. Fighters are supposed to be easy for a newcomer to pick up and use, while Wizards are suppose to be more difficult.

If this is the case, how would you rate the ease of use difficulty for each of the essential classes? Maybe a scale of 1 – 5 with 1 being the easiest and 5 being the hardest?

Assassin
Cleric
Druid
Fighter
Paladin
Ranger
Rogue
Warlock
Wizard

Previous 4e classes, were supposedly balanced in difficult as far as ease of use goes, so I would clump them all in one category “4e Classes”

I’m not sure if different builds have different difficulties or not as I don’t have the books yet, but if that is the case, how would you rate the builds then?

Thanks for taking the time to rate the classes I’m trying to get a better understanding of the essentials stuff before I buy the books.
 

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From the first book (Fallen Lands)

Slayers are the easiest.
Knights, thanks to their defending ways, are a little more complicated.
Thieves are probably next in line, due to you having to grasp Combat Advantage to play them well.
Clerics are the second-hardest
Wizards are the most complicated.

Cheers!
 


So far it's possible that the hunter ranger is the most complicated, simply because he has both trick shots and stances to keep track of. Both of those affect basic attacks and overlay on top of each other.
 

From the first book (Fallen Lands)

Slayers are the easiest.
Knights, thanks to their defending ways, are a little more complicated.
Thieves are probably next in line, due to you having to grasp Combat Advantage to play them well.
Clerics are the second-hardest
Wizards are the most complicated.

If I had to make up a list, it'd probably be the same as Merric's list... -maybe- switching thieves and clerics since tactical positioning is often a harder thing to 'pick up' (at least for the new players i know)

I do not think the cleric that complicated at all, might be on par with the knight.

While clerics aren't that complicated, I'd still call them more complicated than knights. a) you can't just think of your powers for yourself but have to keep mental track of your allies and their health and bonuses, etc. and then you have to make sure you stay in range to give the right effects to the people that need it and b) you have 'passive' rider effects on things (like bonus when using healing word, etc) -- compare that to someone with stances where you make an active decision to have bonuses, with passive bonuses, it's easier to forget. but #b aside, #a is the main part that i think makes it a more complex class than knight.

but mage is, by far, a large jump in complexity than all the others. you have positioning/crowd control/enemies tactics all to keep in mind when making decisions.
 

The easiest is the slayer. Point and kill. No dailies to worry about.

In second place comes the scout. Point and kill works. No dailies to worry about.

In third place comes the hexblade. Point and ... he's dead jim. Slightly more complex than the scout due to status effects, daily powers and summoning.

In a relatively distant fourth place comes the hunter. Point and shoot and you won't go too far wrong. A bit more to keep track of than the other three classes, but can be played effectively while playing naively - and stays out of melee. Arguably a borderline case for the next tier.

This is the first dividing line. All previous classes can be played effectively on autopilot. All classes below need some form of situational awareness.

Easiest is probably the knight. Wade in and let loose with melee basic attacks. Some attention needs to be paid to your surroundings and to finding where the fire is hottest. Maybe a borderline case with the previous tier.

Also on the borderline is the rogue with Tactical Trick. Yes, they need combat advantage. But getting it with Tactical Trick is almost trivial. Without Tactical Trick he's probably close to the hardest in this tier - he requires near-mastery of positioning or exploiting opportunities.

Clerics require situational awareness about who needs healing and protection. One eye on your allies health levels and a minor eye on areas of zones.

Paladins combine all the controlling challenge of a knight with some of that of a cleric - you need to know who needs protection and even healing at the present time while at the same time locking down the bad guys and wrapping the fight round you.

The druid is hardest in this tier. He needs to combine almost all the awareness of the cleric with playing one-man-and-his-dog and setting up two-pronged attacks for his encounter powers.

Here is the second dividing line. After this point in order to be effective you need to stop simply playing the game and start making it.

The wizard. Crowd control. Battlefield positioning. Using the right tool to screw the enemies. And squishy. The wizard needs to make everyone else play his game to win.

The assassin (definitely this tier but not finalised enough to compare to the wizard, not to mention that they are chalk and cheese). With just longsword or axe he's not going to cut it as a striker - and the two handed superior weapons were an exploit. And setting up any of his more powerful "at will" powers (especially a garroting) takes significant effort.
 
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There are two ways to define difficulty. One is in building, one is in play.

Building:

All classes have to pick utility powers and feats.

Both fighter builds have to pick stances, most of which have a very clear use, and a weapon to specialize in, which again has a pretty straight forward effect. That is arguably the easiest.

The cleric, has to choose a build, which in turn determines all it's encounters, and then it has to pick daily powers. It's pretty straight forward, but requires more choices than the fighter (and because they can technically pick from all cleric powers for their dailies, it could be made more complex quite easily, while many other classes only have utility powers they can access out of book).

The warlock is in the same position as the cleric, their build choice sets their encounter powers in place, and then it's a matter of choosing their dailies, which puts them in the same boat as the cleric.

The paladin as well is in that group, basing it's encounter selection on the build, leaving daily powers as the other choice. within that group I'd say the leader is the toughest of the three, followed by the defender and then the striker, as the more other characters are reliant on you, the tougher your choices become.

The ranger has to pick stances, a choice of weapon, and knacks. The knacks and/or stances come up much more often than daily powers do, so proper choices of those is a bit more key.

Similarly, the druid has to choose their build (which is a combination of high damage/low accuracy or low damage/high accuracy with both their own weapon and their animal companian), but also an at-will power, knacks and daily powers. They don't get multiple at-will options in play like the martial characters, so the choice of at-will initially is more important. Similarly, their choice of animal companion has an impact on their allies, as do knacks, and they have dailies on top of that.

The rogue has to pick it's tricks. While this is really the only option the rogue has to have (other than skills, feats, utilities like everyone else does), evaluating the benefit of the tricks is a bit harder than most of the other options. They are similar to the monk's full disciplines as they provide both movement and combat bonuses, and have some implied benefits (ability to get in and out of melee/flanking, etc) that make them a bit harder to evaluate than simple power choices like extra damage vs. dazing, etc. I'd say probably on par with the druid, maybe the druid is a bit harder though.

The top of the heap is definitely the wizard, as it has to pick a build, but still has to choose it's own encounter powers, in addition to dailies. On top of that, all power choices are doubled (outside of at-wills) because of their spellbook, which requires more than just pick the best (or the one associated with your build) power at each level ... you have to factor in how to best make use of the versatility. If you include that all existing wizard powers are technically available, the complexity goes through the roof.

In play:

The slayer fighter is the easiest. Set your stance, and apply your encounter damage bonus when applicable.

The scout ranger has a bit more difficulty in picking the best way stance, but otherwise they are more or less at the same level as the fighter, with the same encounter mechanic even.

The knight fighter does have to deal with the additional burden of the defender mechanics, but as it is an opportunity action and a static aura, there is no burden of "do I save this for later" involved outside of the same encounter power damage boost.

The warlock has the addition of dailies and encounter powers and when to save them or use them, but otherwise is pretty straight forward. Their attack options for at-will are simple, they have one melee and one ranged, so it's pretty much simple if they don't want to spend their limited resources.

The paladin also has dailies and a encounter powers like the warlock, but with a choice of at-will attacks that need to be picked from each time they attack, plus the defender mechanic makes for extra decisions needing to be made.

The rogue is constantly looking for combat advantage, which means making best use of it's tricks at each opportunity. It's enounter power however isn't much of a difficult choice, as it's a matter of either deciding to deal extra damage or turning a miss into a hit (which is doing a LOT of extra damage).

The hunter ranger has decisions similar to the scout ranger, but the two big differences are that you have the extra at-will options (you basically have 5 at-will powers which are modified by your stances) and your encounter is proactive instead of reactive (i.e. you don't decide to add the damage after you hit, you have to decide to try and hit with it, and risk 'wasting' it with a miss). Also, in general, as a controller your decisions are a bit harder, especially as you have many more viable targets as a ranged character than a melee character would.

The cleric has to manage it's resources, deciding when to use it's encounter powers, when to use it's dailies, plus when to use it's healing. And with unique encounter powers at each level, it's a tougher choice of when to use each than with the characters that have the same encounter power multiple times.

The druid has a harder time than the cleric. While it only has one recurring encounter power, it has to coordinate the movement of both itself and it's animal companion and how to best position that companion.

And of course, the wizard is at the top, with all the encounter/daily usage options, the ranged issue of tons of viable targets, and the daily choice of which powers to prepare.

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I left out the assassin ... I'd probably say just shy of the wizard (in play) ... the ability to only use the encounter once makes it a tougher decision of when to use it, you have 4 at-wills to choose from (or however many ... the most recent version isn't the complete version either) and you have dailies which, like the wizard, require you to not only pick when to use it, but which to prepare each day.

As for building, it's a bit easier. Your build choice gives you most of your at-will options (or limits them enough where it's a choice of 2 of 4) so the only other option is your dailies, albeit with more options than you can use at any give time. Still, I'd put that somewhere in the cleric/warlock/paladin range of difficulty to build.
 

Firstly I'd like to clarify that when we're talking about difficulty, what we really mean is the difficulty of making effective use of powers & abilities.

This is not specific to essentials, but I have found that characters which need to track the battlefield almost continually (because of triggered effects) are harder to play effectively. Such as warlord granted bonuses on action points, valourous bard granting temp hp when enemy is bloodied/killed, marking effects, immediate action effects triggered upon various conditions.

Perhaps that is just me being useless? ;)
 

Firstly I'd like to clarify that when we're talking about difficulty, what we really mean is the difficulty of making effective use of powers & abilities.

This is not specific to essentials, but I have found that characters which need to track the battlefield almost continually (because of triggered effects) are harder to play effectively. Such as warlord granted bonuses on action points, valourous bard granting temp hp when enemy is bloodied/killed, marking effects, immediate action effects triggered upon various conditions.

Perhaps that is just me being useless? ;)

In general, the difficulty is going to be:

striker -> defender -> leader -> controller

Since, for the most part, strikers do their own thing, defenders have to worry about their immediate surroundings, leaders need to worry about their allies while controllers are looking at the whole environment.

Now each can then have a sliding scale added to that. Most of the guys with added luggage (beastmaster ranger, shaman, essential druid) are going to have a whole other character to worry about which makes things harder. Some characters have a number of finite and unique resources (the standard encounter/daily/utilty concept), which requires finding the best time/situation/etc to use them, after which they are left with very few options (2 at-wills for the most part, plus some 'basic' things like a ranged attack if neccesarry, etc). Others have non-unique but limited resources (psionics and many essential characters). In those cases, it's not just use it or not, but sort of a rate of use (the psionics are an even more difficult case since you have a number of powers that can be augmented, often in two different ways, and augmenting one way doesn't stop you from doing so again unless you run out of power points, combining elements of both).

On thing that essential characters, especially martial ones, have that ups their difficulty is that while they lack the daily resource management, or he decision making of which encounter to use in this particular situation ... they have a larger choice when it comes to at-wills (the hunter ranger especially) and since those resources never run out, they never narrow their choices down significantly over the course of an encounter.
 

There are many variants of choices, characters, classes, and sub-classes, maybe even super-classes. I'll rate overall.

I'm going off that you've played before. I'm pretty new at this too.

Assassin - 2. You subject to shroud then hit. A stealthy fighter type.
Cleric - 3. Average as deciding who to heal more is the biggest factor.
Druid - 4. You shouldn't start playing with this. Need positioning exp. for monsters.
Fighter - 2. You mark, fight, and move sometimes. Pretty easy.
Paladin - 3. A cleric on wheels.
Ranger - 4. (See a pattern) Watch your beast. Quarry with conscience.
Rogue -1. Patronizing. Get combat advantage then roll.
Warlock -2. Your a fighter who chucks things at your curse.
Wizard - 5. You have to be careful not to run up to an enemy and to blast the right ones. You also have a ton of minor options.

Conclusion. There's more than one factor too. If you have at least one good player to help you through it you should be ok. Some of them don't feel hard to me. Sometimes 'you' could be the one making it hard. Don't be too hard on yourself. ;)

You should learn everything you can before playing a serious game. Some people love to live in a world where it's ok to be unpopular. ;)
 

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