Why are Wynn players so defensive when asked this?

“What’s the best class?”
Why do players usually not give the following answer?
For the most conventional pick, pick mage or warrior. Mage is the most versatile, thus the best. (Pick Mage) Shaman is for aoe damage and support. Assassin is a stupid gimmick that’s fun but not too effective. Archer has great dps if you throw away all self preservation.

 

Because there is no best class. All classes are viable, and what makes something "the best" in any field is almost entirely an opinion. It's better to let new players pick what they think is the coolest and what they will thus likely have the most fun with instead of make them play something they aren't interested with the notion it's somehow "the best" -- something factually untrue.

 

Because the "best" is a matter of opinion, and the strongest and even the average experience of each class changes constantly, both due to updates and to new metas, as well as how the player decides to play it. Lightbender might be the strongest archetype in the game right now, but two updates ago it was kinda meh, and trickobat was OP (actually it might be more than two updates, I've not played much lately). I'm pretty sure trapper is the strongest archer archetype right now, but if you'd used it or boltslinger a year or so ago people would've told you to switch to sharpshooter because it was massively stronger. I know cuz they did to me. Paladin was trash up until the latest update. Is it still? I dunno. Maybe it's really strong right now. Any recommendation based on strength is only true for a short while. Pre-Gavel, mage was considered the worst class by a hilarious degree. Assassin was brokenly overpowered. Then Gavel hit and assassin was practically useless and mage was debatably the strongest class. Ancient history, but it was probably the last time any of this was even close to objective. It certainly isn't now. And more importantly, of all of the current strongest builds, are any of those the most fun to play?

Also, you listed a ton of characteristics of the classes from how you've experienced them, but those are all completely untrue for many builds. Fallen rage warrior isn't exactly the most conventional build; deliberately building to be at low health with no way to regain any health during the majority of combat is about as far from a conventional build as you can get imo. Mage might be the most versatile...in terms of the different archetypes, but not the abilities of the each individual archetype. Arcanist is about the biggest one-trick pony in the game. Shaman is for AoE damage and support...unless you play summoner, which can actually do insane single-target damage, but really falls off when there's even two enemies and tends to have minimal support features. Assassin has 3 different gimmicks just in terms of archetypes, at least one of which can be extremely effective in the current patch, and both of the other two have spent a significant amount of time being some of the strongest in the game (trickobat was probably the strongest in the game a patch or two ago, acrobat was always really strong even if the dps was trash, even pure trickster has had its moments, and shadestepper is apparently pretty strong right now.). Archer has insane dps if you sacrifice survivability... but so does every other class. Fallen can often outdamage even a fairly glass-cannon archer, and tanky archer is still 100% viable and a thing. And pretty much all of my specific examples are also not true of all builds.

 

You just answered your own question. "What is the best class" is vague with no correct answer and even if divided up into the sections that you yourself listed, it's still completely subjective. Mage is the most versatile by your standards, but maybe not by others'. There's a good argument for Warrior as the most versatile given that two of its archetypes are complete polar opposites and the other has good range, mobility, and damage.
Shaman may be the go-to aoe damage/support for you but for others it might be mage or even warrior (with an extremely funky fallen/paladin build or something lol idk)

 

(yes but falladin has terrible aoe)

 

on top of what everyone else has said, classes are not permanently in one state. while assassin may seem like a "stupid gimmick" that isn't "too effective" now, it could later become very strong while the previous "better" options have become bad. we're tweaking the balance of classes all the time and the "best" and "worst" is constantly changing. generally, people prefer not to tell people what they think the current best class is because it's ultimately meaningless and better to just choose whichever sounds the most fun or interesting, because the core concept of the class is what will ultimately always remain

 

sure i agree, telling new players what to play is bad cuz they should just explore the game
but in terms of endgame, to deny that certain classes are stronger than others would be ridiculous
mage/archer and fallen is clearly stronger than shaman/assassin in the terms of the "meta" (big number=better) sure, i get that that is not how the game is balanced around the "meta" dps class, but there are factually better classes for playing the game (id also argue that shaman/assassin being weaker in the meta isnt fun because it feels kinda pointless to play/spend le on them when there is better options)

 

The other bit is that you cant just rank them on damage when talking about which is best since your build is a HUGE factor, any class can do the most damage if you sacrifice all your defense in the same vein any class can be unkillable with enough defensive stats.

Saying something like "assassin does the highest damage" might be true if you minmax, but in practice a build like that'll die if something looks at it wrong.

Also we say this because we want people to play the game how they want, not what is "strongest"; given the opportunity gamers will optimize the fun out of the game and all that.

 

Doesn't the answer to "what's the best class" change depending on which aspect of the gameplay you focus on? I imagine it changes if you play mostly solo versus often in parties, whether you do raids or not, etc. What if I don't want to do endgame stuff and just want to run a merchant booth for crafting materials that most people don't grind for?

 

Oh hey your the guy from Blitz SG

 

No one here is saying, “all classes have equal power or viability.” It’s that archetypes and classes all have unique roles, they depend a lot on items, and are constantly changing. So unless you get extremely specific and are also thorough, at best you can say a particular build for a particular archetype is the best at a given role. And that would probably be only true for a few months.

That’s not even considering that other, “sub-optimal” builds or archetypes might just be more fun to play with. I have been using the Champion set on my Lightbender with Bob’s mythic wand, and that’s carried me 20 levels to level 95. Is it optimal? No, but it’s nice not having to worry about gimmicks and having reliable healing. I’ll still change my items once I reach level 100, but it’s really not something I should worry about until then.

So the best way to answer that question is, “Try a few classes and archetypes and see what you like the best.”

 

I'd argue that assassin is maybe the most meta class in the game right now. It feels like a solid third to maybe even half the people I see in pfinder are trickster or trickstepper, and for good reason. There aren't a lot of archetypes that can melt a boss faster than a glass cannon trickster, and that is the meta right now. I tried it out and, yeah, you do damage. Same with shaman. Shaman can do some positively nutty damage with the right build; hell, with a fairly vanilla glass cannon build you can get Eldritch Call to do upwards of half a million dps (though in fairness that wouldn't be the actual practical DPS 99% of the time). All but the highest-damage arcanists would struggle to compete with either of those. Same for paladin, battlemonk, riftwalker, lightbender, boltslinger and sharpshooter.

Also, ignoring the raid meta, a lot of those "worse" archetypes are better at other stuff. Riftwalker and lightbender are both excellent at not dying because heal is the best spell in the game. Battlemonk is fantastic at mobility. Paladin is the best healer and also buffs people, which makes it the best teammate to have, and it's nearly unkillable in most content. Outside of the very narrow scope of raids, where DPS is king, I'd recommend those over the meta for a lot of content. I personally like the way riftwalker plays, and appreciate the versatility that heal offers, so I accept that my damage is bad and use it, because I think it works the best for lootruns and other solo content in many cases (I'd still like a damage buff please; literally just increase the effectiveness of winded and lock if off so lightbender can't build it up past 10).

 

Wait so is Shadestepper still bad? Because you said earlier that you heard it was pretty good, but you also said people mainly use the other 2 in raids still.

I always thought Shadestepper was bad because of the Vanish cooldown among other things requiring too much setup and its abilities not synchronizing with each other well.

 

Aspects have mostly fixed the vanish cooldown (i'm one of the lucky ones). Abilities are kinda weird, but hmelee works really well (and has since 2.1), spell is still bad.

 

Shadestepper's pretty good, especially heavy melee as Elytry said (spell is viable but backstab is awful because enemies spin too much). The setup is still kind of annoying, but it's not that bad. Trickster is just absolutely nuts and it feels like almost half of the people I see are using it (seriously it probably averages like 1.5 people per raid) because it's possibly the best or at least easiest way to output more damage per second than I do in a day with my riftwalker (which really isn't that hard). That and trapper are probably the two most common archetypes I see, because both are just absolutely nuts at dealing damage, and for better or for worse, that is the most important thing at the moment.

 

I think there's a lot of different reasons, tbh. Like

• Each class is divided into three archetypes, each usually having different roles and relative power compared to each other. Take Mage, for example, which has a support class built around heal that changes meteor into persistent orbs, a glass cannon archetype that completely replaces heal, and a scaling class that increases its damage the longer it fights a foe. Not to mention that these archetypes can be mixed together in various ways, like lightbender and riftwalker being combined to give good ramping damage to lightbender's orbs at the cost of some support abilities.
  
• Each archetype can also be built in different ways, which can also vary widely in power. For example, Melee and Spell boltslinger are both very different in terms of playstyle, and currently melee bolt is relatively strong while Spell bolt is relatively weak.
  
• In addition to that, some classes can have both really strong archetypes and really weak ones, and there's pretty consistent item and ability rebalances that shift around the meta pretty drastically; for example, Fallen warrior used to be one of the most powerful archetypes in the meta while Paladin used to be the weakest, but after a ton of changes Fallen has, well, fallen in terms of viability while Paladin is now pretty decent.
  • There's no real way to quantify how strong a class is overall because of all this. Like, if Paladin and Battle Monk were both really bad archetypes but Fallen is the best (or one of the best), how would you quantify the strength of Warrior overall? Is it one of the best classes in the game because of Fallen? But that ignores that two thirds of the archetypes aren't Fallen. Do you take the average strength of the archetypes and say that Warrior is, overall, below average? But that ignores the sheer power that Fallen has. And what happens when Fallen gets nerfed while Paladin gets buffed? is that an overall nerf to the class? a buff? does it cancel out even though both are different archetypes?
• Finally, your build is generally a much better indicator of overall strength than classes are; while some archetypes can push builds further than others, good archetypes cannot save you if your build is bad, and what's considered a good or bad build tends to change over time. Tanky builds used to be the meta, then Rainbow Slap, and now it's usually about glass cannons, and the meta archetypes and classes will shift to accomodate that.

 

Speaking of Riftwalker, is it ever getting a rework? I don’t mean to divert, but I rediscovered ChrisWildFire’s rework suggestion for it and it’s like 2 years old now. I was always just disappointed at its lack of speed and how it has to compete with Arcanist to be the DPS role because it has nothing else going for it. Even Lightbender gets a speed buff from heal…

 

I'm hoping it gets some buffs without a total rework to the gameplay. I like the way it plays but it just doesn't do enough damage in most cases. That said I have seen some really cracked crafted builds (with quetz of all wands) that could just dish out insane damage (300k dps easily, possibly more than 500k), but those are extremely far from normal and I frankly have no idea how. For most builds it falls short of even lightbender.

 

I feel that just buffing the damage of Riftwalker would then make Arcanist worse relatively since they still compete for the DPS role. Like sure, Riftwalker could use a damage buff, but I don’t like how it has nothing else going for it. I guess Riftwalker also supports melee more than Arcanist, but like… it’s melee on Mage. You’re still going to use your spells anyway. (And Lightbender is already focused on melee lol). I mean of course there’s Heal, but with Lightbender, Riftwalker feels like it doesn’t do anything the best.

That’s why I think it’s healthier for Riftwalker to focus on speed and unique movement. Like ChrisWildFire’s Rift mechanic. Mage already has the best movement spell in the game. I don’t feel like it would be intrusive either since his rework at least still utilizes Winded and mostly adds optional, but useful and unique damage and movement options.