Ranger, Priest of Mitra and Necromancer

These are the three classes I will be playing. Why? Because I like PvP and for PvP, I prefer well-rounded classes.

Funcom is marketing the PvP aspect of their game quite heavy. It still looks like the PvP servers will be a free-for-all, so competition will be fierce. The developers are going to spend a lot of time trying to balance the classes for 1 on 1 encounters. It is inevitable that cries of overpowered will come and nerfs will happen. What this means for the players is that unless you are willing to reroll constantly, you are much better off picking the classes you enjoy playing.

In Anarchy Online, Funcom does have a history of swinging the nerf bat fairly heavily. In one patch, my main went from being uber in pvp and popular in groups to being a buffbot. From the few days I played Age of Conan, I can already tell that skill will be a much bigger factor in this game compared to other MMORPG’s. Picking well-rounded classes and learning them well is the best approach.

Ranger

1. Stealth!
2. Great damage from ranged and in melee.
3. Ranged, melee and trap snares. It is borderline overpowered how many ways they have to slow down opponents.
4. Shield and medium armor means good survivability. Snares can be used defensively as well.

Priest of Mitra

1. Healing!
2. Nukes and spellweaving should provide decent damage output, especially with feats.
3. PoM is the healing class that specializes in crowd control. Crowd control can rule in PvP. A level 80 PoM can stun, fear, knockback, snare, and blind. All of these should work in PvP, although some classes have ways to mitigate their effects.
4. PoM will also be the most desired party member. Supposedly the 3 healer classes will have comparable healing abilities, but I will bet that simply having ‘priest’ in the name will make them more popular. In addition, Tempests are nuke heavy and Bear Shaman are melee. I think it’s quite possible that they will be grabbing plenty of aggro, dying and frustrating party members.

Necromancer

1. I always play pet classes. I like them because the pets add a layer of complexity to the gameplay that is often lacking in other classes.
2. Very well rounded. They can fear, steal health from their pets, use the pets as a meatshield and they have AoE nukes. This makes them near self-sufficient.

Okay, this is a long ass post and if you actually made it this far, thanks for reading and I hope you learned something useful. See you in Hyboria!